Hack Reactor

BEFORE YOU READ: If you are not a diligent, self-motivated person, or if you think you can just easily get 100k+ salary right after you finish the bootcamp, then don’t even bother go to ANY bootcamps. But if you think you have the determination to take the challenges, read my SUPER HONEST review below. If you do read, please read it all. I know it’s long but they are useful information

Q1: Can I get a job after the bootcamp? Will I waste all my money and time going to bootcamp? This is the most frequently asked question and I will answer this first.

A: I graduated from Hack Reactor (Los Angeles) in September 2018 and landed a job in Downtown L.A on November 2018. There are people saying L.A has few openings for new developers. Yes, that is true but there are still tons of opportunities, you just don’t touch the opportunities that easily. And that also means you have less competition.

If the way you are looking for jobs is just sending resume on Indeed, you will have a super HARD time looking for a job. You need to connect with people! Go on linkedin, connect developers and recruiter, keep sending greetings (Hack Reactor will teach you all the career stuff in the last week entire week), go to meetups, go to tech events.

Another thing is don’t always look for Junior Devs, start as an Intern (even unpaid), put your self-ego down a little bit even you finish one of the best bootcamps in the country. I am pretty sure an intern’s skill level in a tech company can easily beat the top students in your cohort. Many companies are looking for Interns to do the easy but annoying tasks! I can 100% ensure you will learn a lot more doing those ‘easy but annoying tasks’ than learning from Udemy at your place!

Q2: How is Hack Reactor? Is the material good? Is it a good bootcamp?

A: It’s 100% a good bootcamp and the people who get in the boot camp are smart (you have to pass the interview and finish pre-course to get in). You have junior phase to give you foundation about Javascript and Node.js (database, React, Express server, async operations,data structure, etc). You have to pass an exam to continue the 2nd half of the course (you will pass if you study hard).

The 2nd half the course is project-base, one frontend and one backend. You will learn database optimization, AWS, Docker, Load Balancer, Agile Methodology, etc. THIS IS THE TIME YOU NEED TO WORK EXTRA HARD! Remember to take notes and get through as many possible tasks as you can! EMPLOYERS LOVE TO HEAR YOUR WAR STORIES IN THE PROJECTS! NOT JUST YOU LEARNED HOW TO BUILD A FULL STACK APP!

Q3: I heard some people say there is not much supervising, especially during the project phase, is that a bad sign?

A: NOT AT ALL! Tech Mentors will check all your work and there will be exams. Additionally, in your real developer job, YOU ARE MOSTLY ON YOUR OWN! Your supervisor will just give you a task and not much information to guide you through. Even you may work on group projects, NO ONE WILL WORK ON THE SAME TASK! People will work on different pieces and merge them together. Many real developers spend almost 50% of their time researching. Hack Reactor will train you to do that by only giving few instructions.

When I was in the boot camp, I was desperate for help and kinda think Hack Reactor is doing a bad job teaching without telling me the answer. However, when I got into the industry, I finally understand why they do this -- to train you to be independent, figuring out stuff on your own. I can also 100% ensure if you always ask for help after you get a job, you will be fired because people will see you as not independent.

SOME OTHER INFO ABOUT HACK REACTOR

They are always changing their course material to suit the most updated technology. They do a townhall every week to gather comments / criticism / advice from all students and they will try their best to change the operation based on people’s opinion.

Overall, I will 100% recommend Hack Reactor if you really prepare to work hard. If you can work super hard in Hack Reactor and reaching out to people in the industry after graduation, I am sure you can get your foot in the developer industry!

Before attending Hack Reactor, I had anxiety and imposter syndrome. I wasn't sure if I was able to succeed in computer science. However, after the first day of the program I was immediately supported by the HR faculty and my cohort mates. Every Hacker in Residence (HiR) who had gone through the program before had a similar story and experience to what we were going through and assisted us with understanding and kindness. The instructors were always encouraging and extremely knowledgable. By the end of the program, many of my peers had become some of my best friends. 

THE COURSE

The program consisted of two halves. The first half consisted of JavaScript and computer science fundamentals such as Big O Notation, JS 'this' binding, and functional patterns. Some concepts were picked up faster by certain people, which caused a positive feedback loop of assistance between peers. An extremely important skill that was hammered into us was autonomous learning. Even though HiRs were readily available to assist us, they supported us attempting to search for answers on our own because this is an extremely valuable skill to have as a software engineer. And unlike many other fields of study, computer science and web development resources are bountiful and easily searchable.

The second half of the course consisted of two projects where we were split into groups of 3-5. During this time, we gradually increased the amount of interview practice along with learning some industry practices and technologies. Some valuable technologies/concepts they had taught us were that of Docker containerization, system design, AWS tools, and Agile Methodologies. This portion of the course was essentially a ramp up to let us out into the real world. Autonomy and time management was a key portion because of the freedom gained in the second half of the course, so self discipline and motivation is definitely key. If you did not have the motivation and self discipline to apply yourself in this part of the course, you were more likely to not absorb the material. Since it is largely self-motivated, several people who were not as focused struggled in this aspect.

The last week of the course consisted of job coaching from resume/cover letter writing to behavioral interview practice and even as far as negotiating a job offer. This instilled an extremely high level of confidence in my job search process and helped me interview.

I would also like to state that not all of the technologies and format may be correct if you were to attend now. Hack Reactor rapidly iterates their curriculum to keep up with the changing demand of skills in the web development field. One such change is the implementation of Docker. When we had an alumni panel, one of the alumni had stated that Docker was not incorporated into the curriculum when he attended the program a year before I had attended. With this, you can confidently be reassured that Hack Reactor are constantly on the lookout to make you the most desirable software engineer possible. 

OVERALL

Why did I remove a star? Unfortunately, not many of my cohort mates were as lucky as me - someone else mentioned it already, but Los Angeles is not a great market for junior devs. If you are considering HR, I highly recommend you expand your job search to be outside of LA. I found a job because I moved to Seattle which had more junior dev openings than LA. Another cohort mate was able to find one in Boston. 

The 2nd half of the program, since it was largely self driven, felt like we were all headless chickens trying to program. I sincerely wish they could have taught us more in the time since a lot of time was wasted. Upper management for the LA HR group was also lackluster and felt disconnected from the group as a result.

Overall, I would highly recommend Hack Reactor as a coding bootcamp. I gained so much confidence in myself both technically and socially because of this software engineering immersive, and have even obtained a job as a software engineer within the average time expected of a Hack Reactor grad (3 months). 

WHO IS HR FOR?

Attend HR if you are able to be self-driven, motivated, and have a strong work ethic and passion for coding. I do not recommend this course if you are coming in half-assed and are expecting a fat paycheck to be handed to you at the end of the course. Many of my cohort mates and I have had to slave away for months applying, interviewing, and coding to be successful. Although HR does try its best to help you get a job, at the end of the day, that will be up to you on how much you want to apply yourself and how much you're willing to sacrifice sleep to succeed. There is only so much HR can do for you. They can teach you the skills, but the rest is up to you.

I attended Hack Reactor Los Angeles in summer of 18 and I had a very mixed and eye-opening experience. First off, id like to say that the educational portion of the corriculum is only done in the first half of the program. I dropped out after the first half, receieved half my money back (almost 9k), and finished the second half at home. I even managed to finish it faster than if I had stayed in the program thanks to most of the material being availabe on websites like Udemy for $10 (my cohort-mates filled me in on every topic I needed to cover to finish my front-end and back-end capstones).

Many of my ex-cohort mates complained that the majority of their time was wasted in the second half, and because it was mostly unsupervised, some even played LAN video games all day instead of coding because they were "stuck" and were just waiting for the smartest kids in the cohort to figure it out for everyone else (which is usually what happened).

What I believe is most important to say, is that the numbers they adverties are completely false. It is not as exclusive as you might think, and the number of students who get jobs afterwards is far fewer than they say. During my time there, the head of oporations told us that 25%, not 3% of applicants are accepted, demeaning the exclusivity of the entire experience. Next, Id like to say that at the time that I had been accepted (around early May 2018), Hack Reactor LA official stats stated that 53% of graduates got jobs in the first 3 months, and that number went up to the mid-70's at 6 months. It has been 5 months since my cohort (LA23, about 17 ppl) graduated (not including me obv) and only 2 have secured jobs so far. The cohort after me (LA24, about 19 ppl) graduated in Oct 2018 and as of writing this, only about 4 people have found jobs. I actually met a graduate from LA20 at a job interview in October and he still hadnt found a job yet, meaning he had been looking for somewhere around a year.

This is mostly due to what appears to be a severe lack in junior level and mid-level jobs in the LA area, but it also proves that now-a-days, going to an expensive coding bootcamp will not increase your chances of getting a job. They do well to tell you that when you sign up -- "dont think you're guatenteed a job", and in fact, sometimes they tell you not to even mention that you ever attended a coding bootcamp. Employers are weary of bootcampers now, and with another 20 engineers being pumped out every 3 months, the market for fresh engineers seems to be pretty much at capacity in LA. It seems to be more about who you already know that what your skillset is. Most of the smartest kids still dont have jobs. 

I will say that, if you have the money to spend, that attending Hack Reactor will be the fastest way to get a broad range of skills and a general understanding of how to work with a basic MEAN/MERN stack. Before I attended Hack Reactor, my main problem was simply managing to code through projects autonomaously. meaning, If i ran into a big enough problem, I had no idea where to turn to solve it. After hack reactor, I can say that I was mostly autonomous and could finally start to figure out tough issues by myself. Hack Reactor gave me confidence, but unfortunately, it seems like the resume is what counts in this game. No job experience means no job. For this reason, many people in the cohorts I was familiar with are now turning to searching for unpaid internships...

I attended the remote program of Hack Reactor back in this year's spring.  I went in with a solid understanding of programming in general, specifically back-end in JAVA and spring framework.  My previous job was a software engineer position where I felt like my contributions and works were just a small drop in the ocean for the company.  I wasn't satisfied with what I was doing and decided to leave the company.  Alot of things happened between then til I eventually decided to join Hack Reactor but thats not important for this review.

Despite my prior experience, the Hack Reactor cirriculum wasn't a cake walk for me.  Especially in week 3 where we had to learn 3 frameworks (backbone, react, and angularjs) in one week.  I was spending extra hours after class on sites like egghead and medium reading and watching related videos to fully understand these frameworks, es6, and bunch of others stuff.  This is also the week I realize how much I can learn in a such a short period of time, I didn't know I was capable of doing this.  A life changing moment for sure and that would be an understatement.  Since that week I started to develop a habit of buying one udemy course every few weeks, and I think I have learned more in past 8 months than the 10 years prior to that.  

Robin was our tech mentor, a javascript ninja, but more than that he was a really personable teacher who was as engaging as he was knowledgeable.  I regret not booking more office hour with him but part of Hack Reactor is learning how to learn.  We also had Kyle and Annah as our shepherds (Teaching assistant).  Kyle introduced me to this new world of graphQL, I'm a huge fans of graphQL now because of him.  Annah is someone who would stay beyond her hours to help students.  We're both from east coast and we would see her on helpdesk helping students after 12AM quite often.  Annah is like a sister to me now and we talk all the time.  Aside from this teaching trio, we also have Hailey, who was our counselor and possibly the most positive person you'll ever meet.  And last but most important aspect of Hack Reactor in term of personnel, my classmate.  Who would have thought, when you put a bunch of brilliant people who share the same goal together, good things happen.  Now, its not all fine and dandy, espeically during our last 4 weeks (The last 4 weeks of hack reactor is what we call the thesis weeks.  Hack Reactor would put us in a group of 4 or 5 and work on a fullstack application) where our group would run into some conflicts due to disagreements, and for a few times our group couldn't get anything done because of that.  I really hope we could work in a smaller group where people would agree better (maybe a pair or even solo). That was easily the most unproductive time during hack reactor for me. 

In term of job assistance there isnt much I can speak of.  You can talk to your outcome coach or outcome HiR to review your resume, do mock interview with you, and for interview advices.  And as far as I understand, this will continue throughout your jobsearch.  There is also this huge network you will get through Hack Reactor and Galvanize which could be very benefitial.  Thats pretty much it for job assistance.  4 months in and I still have quite a few classmate who are still job searching.

Overall I thoroughly enjoy my time in Hack Reactor.  Was it perfect?  No.  Was it the best decision I made in recent years?  Considering that my only other major decision in recent years is to heavily invest on ethereum when they were at 800?  Easily.  Would I join Hack Reactor again and do it all over from sratch?  Absolutely.

One could not be happier with a decision than I am with mine to attend the Austin Immersive at Hack Reactor. 

Like a lot of people my age, I have always been infatuated with technology and began messing around with computers and code at a young age.  Over the years I have taken countless online courses but nothing ever seemed to stick. That being said I never really understood any of the deeper concepts needed to actually write meaningful code until I started the prep program for Hack Reactor.

I had never heard of coding schools like this before a few years ago and never did my research until my brother in law went to a coding bootcamp in Cleveland in 2017. I was very curious about his experience and started doing my research. He had mixed reviews and was definitely overwhelmed with the pace but I was intrigued nonetheless. After a couple weeks of research and talking to admissions with multiple schools I finally decided to get started with the paid Structured Study Program provided by Hack Reactor. It was the most in-depth and fast-paced training I had ever been through. Even if you decide to go to a different school this prep program is amazing. Once I was about halfway through the SSP program I decided to take the technical interview to get into Hack Reactor and passed!

After a lot of research and family discussion, I decided on the in-person immersive in Austin and it was incredible in so many ways. I was thoroughly impressed with how much the staff cared about our success and about us as people. The team was led by Linden Kueck who turned out to be as loving and helpful a teacher/leader one could ever have. I learned an unbelievable amount about computer science, data structures, algorithms and Javascript in a very, very short time but I am also very grateful for the unexpected lessons in team dynamics and soft skills like how to effectively work and communicate with other developers in the real world. 

Aside from the unexpected, I can't express in words how much I learned in such a short time. The pace was nothing short of insane and I was not sure I was going to remember anything that was being taught or if I was even going to finish the program. Then all of a sudden things just started to click and I was instinctively writing clean, readable code and building applications all on my own. These guys know what they are doing.

After graduation, the team continued to help immensely and the career coaches were amazing as well. I interviewed for just over a month and landed a full stack engineering position in my hometown making 6 figures. The job hunt in this industry is difficult but Hack Reactor was there to help the whole way. 

If you are serious about coding as a career move and are looking to do it quickly, I don't see how anyone could make a better choice than the Austin campus at Hack Reactor. 

This program is great for people who want to get a job in the web dev industry.  The program is jam-packed but there is a lot of information needed to be proficient in web development.  You will be working hard and you will learn a ton.  The staff is top notch and very knowledgeable.  The curriculum is good and teaches what you need to know to land an entry-level job.   The job support is really good, but don't expect them to find you a job.  They will help you in your search with stuff like resumes, interviews, and keeping you on track.  Everything I needed to do well in my interview I learned through Hack Reactor.  If you are interested in a programming boot camp I could not recommend Hack Reactor more.  ​

I just graduated from the remote, part-time program and had a great experience. The course is very challenging and you want to be sure you are prepared before you take the entrance exam. That's a good thing! It means that the people in your cohort deserve to be there. You will be working with them all the time, so you will learn from them and they will learn from you. The quality of the student body is one of the major reasons that I would recommend HR.

The program does a good job of taking your through the basics and making sure that you cover all the important bases (databases, authentication, frontend frameworks). As it progresses you get less and less hand-holding. There's always help desk, and the tech mentors are readily available, but the idea is that by the time you graduate, you need to feel like an engineer. That means knowing how to read documentation yourself and debug like a pro. 

I'm graduating now with an strong sense of accomplishment and the confidence that I can pickup any framework or web technology and make it work and I couldn't ask for more. I've worked with seasoned engineers from Google during a hackathon and been a valuable asset already. Five stars, no reservations. 

** Also, the part-time, remote program was perfect for me, as a full-time dad. Having 9 months to absorb all the material that folks cover in 3 months during the immersive is a serious advantage. It's also no joke. Be ready to commit all your Saturdays for 9 months straight to studying!

Think of software engineering as a trade and of Hack Reactor as a trade school. Sure, everything you learn at a trade school you could teach yourself, but you'll end up spending a lot more time and effort, probably go down the wrong path more than once and pick up quite a few bad habits along the way. Hack Reactor teaches you the tools of the trade, i.e the front- and back-end frameworks and libraries that are in demand in the job market now. They will also teach you some CS fundamentals, offer excellent tutorship during the 12 week program, and prepare you for the job search afterwards as well.

But what you get out of Hack Reactor will largely be what you put into it. You can put in the bare minimum effort and make it through, but you would only be doing yourself a disservice. Your 12 weeks at Hack Reactor offer you a chance to put everything you have into learning this new trade and starting your new career. If you give it everything you've got, at the other end of it all, you will probably be very well prepared to find a job and to perform well in that role. You will at times feel like you've made the wrong decision, you won't understand what you're supposed to be teaching yourself, you will feel like you're spinning your tires. Those are the times when you struggle your way through, then you go back for more in order to solidify the concepts in your head. It will be at times very stressful, but at the same time very enjoyable, because you are challenging yourself and overcoming.

I attended Hack Reactor Austin from January to April 2018, during which time I applied myself more to one end than I ever had before in my life. Within a month of graduation, I had gotten two job offers for three times as much money as I was making at my previous job. It was easily one of the best decisions I've made in my life up until this point, and I am not infinitely happier at my new job than I ever was at my old one. I want to go back and shake my old boss's hand for having laid me off, because he set a chain of events in motion that put me where I am now, at an excellent company with a great culture and fun co-workers who also genuinely enjoy what they're doing. 

10/5. The Hack Reactor experience can’t really be put into word. I dropped out of college my sophomore year because it was super boring. I moved to San Francisco to attend Hack Reactor not really knowing what to expect. The first couple of weeks were really quite intense, the work load and the pace were something I defiantly wasn’t used to. After a couple of weeks you kinda start to settle in though. Nothing changes, the work load is the same and the pace is the same (if not more and faster) but you learn to adapt and get comfortable. When thinking about the qualities you hope to gain from a software bootcamp you might not think of a level of comfort with heavy work loads and long hours, but in this industry it is critical to your success. And I know that doesn’t sound great, but its a big part of why the average starting salary for a software engineer is 125,000$. Hack Reactor doesn’t necessarily teach you how to be a software engineer, they teach you how to make yourself a software engineer. You might not understand the importance of this, but it is the crucial difference that makes Hack Reactor grads successful. New technologies and verisons of techs come out almost every week, if not everyday, if you only learn how to be a software engineer today with todays tech you won’t last 2 months. Hack Reactor gives you the skills necessary to constantly and efficiently teach yourself new tools to continuously make yourself a great engineer, even after you graduate. Today Im proud to say I’m a Full-Stack Software engineer working in the Bay Area.

Attending Hack Reactor has been one of the best decisions I've made in my career. You could argue that you could teach yourself or maybe even try to go back to traditional school, but I believe nothing is as cost or time-efficient as attending the best bootcamp in the industry. There is plenty of free knowledge and alternatives out there to learn the skills of a software engineer, but for most people starting out it is incredibly difficult to know what to focus on. Hack Reactor will offer you a well thought out roadmap that has been proven to work for thousands of students. You're guaranteed to learn the most in-demand technologies and skills in the industry thanks to its rapid-iteration teaching approach, which provides frequent experimentation and rapid re-investment of findings back into the class. One of my favorite thing about the program is that is practical in nature, so be prepared to experience a non-traditional yet more efficient approach to education in which you'll learn by doing and collaborating with others. By the end of the program, you'll have an amazing portfolio of projects that will impress any hiring manager. And even after you are done as a student, you'll still benefit from the amazing career support Hack Reactor provides and you'll have access to the incredible network of Hack Reactor alumni. Be aware that attending this immersive program will be challenging, but I promise it'll be a fun and rewarding experience.

I attended the Hack Reactor Remote Immersive program and I personally thought it was an amazing experience. One caveat I do want to make clear though is that you NEED to be prepared to take on the commitment if you're going to go through the bootcamp. You'll likely end up spending 10+ hours/day for 6 days a week working on stuff for the bootcamp so you need to make sure that you're able to commit to that. If you do ensure that you're able to commit to it, then you'll be able maximize the benefit you get from the program and learn a ton while you're there. If not, then you'll likely fall behind and feel like you're wasting your time/money. Hack Reactor does offer a part-time remote program that may be suitable for those that can't commit to a 10+ hour/day for 6 days a week commitment. I personally did not attend that so I can't speak for it, but I hear many good things about it.

Hack Reactor does a great job of structuring the curriculum in a way that gives you a lot of guidance on what exactly you need to do at first, then slowly removes the scaffolding as you work through the program. This is because the Hack Reactor curriculum highly emphasizes autonomy which is an extremely  important skill to have as an engineer. Although it's an uncomfortable experience as the scaffolding is slowly removed, it is necessary for one's growth as an engineer. In the real world, you often have minimal direction and are just given a problem to solve. You must go and figure out how to solve that problem on your own. 

Another thing that Hack Reactor does great is teaching you how to learn things quickly and efficiently by having you to dive into various different subjects and learn them in a span of a few days. In the software engineering world, tools are quick to change so it's important to be able to adapt to the situation. As of right now, React is the "hot" framework at the moment, but prior to this there were frameworks like Angular and Backbone that were the "hot" frameworks. As an engineer, you need to learn how to pick up these tools quickly and efficiently because the software engineering world is constantly evolving and being able to quickly pick up these tools is an invaluable skill to have.

Outside of the curriculum, the support you get from the staff and community is amazing. I really enjoyed the cohort I was in and everyone was more than happy to help each other out. I never felt afraid to ping a staff member/classmate if there was something I was struggling with. They're always available help with both emotional and technical support which I really appreciated.

Hack Reactor also gives great support for the job search once you're done with the program. They mentor you on strategies to employ while applying in order to get a good response rate from companies and tailor the coaching you receive based on your strengths/weaknesses. I even got great advice for my personal career growth within my job once I had accepted a job offer. Another great resource for the job search is the alumni network. The alumni network is massive and people are constantly posting about things like job listings within their company, interview tips, development tips, etc.

For cons, I don't have much to say because I thoroughly enjoyed my experience. As I said earlier, you NEED to be prepared to take on this commitment. I fully believe that I had the experience that I had because I made sure to give the program my all and 100% commit to it. The program gives you all the tools you need to succeed, it is on the student to use those tools properly and receive the maximum benefit from it.