Hack Reactor was an exhausting but wonderful three months. I really enjoyed the semi-structured aspect of the sprints (first half) and being able to dig deeper into the things that were interesting to me. The pairing was useful as well - I frequently learned tips from my classmates and was able to reinforce my own understanding by having to talk about code. The second half was much less structured, and while I enjoyed it a little less, it was a great opportunity to practice developing in the same repo with other engineers and tackle more complex problems. I found the interview prep that occured throughout the program to be well aligned to interviews that I experienced in the job search.

While Hack Reactor didn't teach me everything I needed to know to do my eventual job, it provided great foundational knowledge that I was able to use to learn other things, and in a shorter timeframe than I would have been able to do all by myself. The things I use most today (5 years later!) are the deep dive into JS internals and the debugging process.

Instructors were super smart and were great at breaking down concepts. I'd happily take more courses from Marcus or Fred in the future. The career search staff was energetic and invested in our success, and while most of the staff from my cohort are no longer with the company, Marlene (who does alumni job support) is awesome - no-nonsense, caring, and focused.

Overall, if I could go back and time and do it again, I would. :)

I graduated from HRSF in September 2018, right as they were acquired by Galvanize. 3.5 stars. It was an overall rewarding experience and I don't regret it, but my general opinion is that the experience left a lot to be desired. I'll spare you the details of what you hear over and over (hard work, cameraderie, life changer) and provide you with my unabashed opinion on what was once considered SF's premier immersive program.

My Hack Reactor journey took place over an entire year. I started the part time structured study program in Jan, got admitted into the April cohort, attended for a week and was (rightfully) deemed underprepared, attended the HREXT program for 6 weeks and got readmitted in June, graduated in Sept, and held fellowship that finished up in Dec. I was fortunate enough to have an entire year (plus months of job searching) where I could dedicate my time and energy in going from someone who enjoyed programming but had little knowledge outside of online free courses to a graduate. So my first caveat is that your journey may be longer than just 3 months; be aware of your learning pace and take your time, because it's better to do that than get by with the "C's get degrees" mindset.

That said, one great thing about this program is that they won't let you through the gates unless they deem you to be ready (in the beginning, anyway. Will get into more details later). They were able to catch the fact that I was going to fall through the cracks within the first 3 days(!) and suggested that I enroll in the HREXT program to get back on track for the next cohort. I am SO thankful for that, because I knew that I have a high learning curve and still felt shaky with the fundamentals when they admitted me--I was pretty sure that I could catch up by putting in extra effort and extra hours, and they gave me a chance to prove it.

The biggest flaw I've found with the program is the unrealistic amounts of autonomy that are expected from you in the program, especially in the second half. When you're a junior engineer at a company, you are usually not expected to "know everything" and will generally receive some sort of mentorship beyond "just Google it". Yes, it's true that HR wants to emphasize becoming self-sufficient as an engineer and I totally support that, but some things just can't be Googled without priming. Things like bugs, error messages, function signatures, etc should definitely be independently researched, but certain things (design patterns, best practices) are much harder to research. One example: business logic should generally not be stored on the client; this idea didn't come naturally to me, and as a new engineer, I wouldn't even have known the term "business logic." Since we had such a high emphasis on client-side work, it seemed logical to me to have the client handle it, and my group mates and I didn't even realize that it could be handled by the server! It wasn't until I had friends who work in the field who code reviewed me and pointed out this antipattern. The TL;DR is, by the second half, no one looks at your code besides your equally inexperienced teammates, and no one will inform you if your code is full of antipatterns, inefficiencies, and other bad practices that aren't intuitively searchable.

Lastly, I want to say that your cohort-mates make all the difference. As I mentioned, I got the rare experience of being in two cohorts (granted, only a week with the first one), but the difference was night and day. My first cohort was <25 people, mature, and most people were considerate. The cohort I graduated with was a wreck. I really wanted to avoid the summer cohorts because I knew it would be flooded with college students on summer break, and I was right to make that judgment. It was ~40 people, rowdy/loud, and ridiculously difficult to learn. People were terribly behaved and I felt bad for our cohort lead, who had to spend time disciplining our cohort as if it were middle school detention. Maybe half the students were serious about working and learning, the other half were being outwardly inconsiderate, playing DoTA, chatting on the phone, vaping indoors, leetcoding, and doing phone interviews. I don't care that these people were doing other things, but I DO care that I spent 18K and was being bothered left and right by people who don't realize that they're in a common space and lack the courtesy to not be disruptive to others who actually take their work seriously. Imagine if you were in a college lecture next to someone blabbering on the phone and you'll get the picture. If you think I'm some ol' curmudgeon...I was 23 at the time.

Lastly, job searching. I knew I would take longer than average to find a job because of my low confidence and learning curve, but I promise if you put in the effort it can be done! The job search behavioral tip lectures were helpful, but I didn't really get much out of connecting with my career coach after graduation. The micromanaging, constant checkin thing just didn't work out for me and I am glad my coach respected my decision to go at it at my own pace. I think they focused too much on the "behavioral" side (seriously, there's a calendar for how you should spend your job search days) and not enough on the technical aspects of getting a job (aka what really counts).

I would like to give a shoutout to the HREXT team though--that program was AMAZING. You'll learn and get actual support and encouragementand actual advice on coding cleanly and idiomatically rather than some hand-wavy non-answer.

Background about me: taken HS programming course, BS+MS in Biotechnology, some college work. Shy, introverted, low confidence, not particularly well inclined toward math/engineering and slower learner, but love learning about technology and algorithms nonetheless.

I started the Hack Reactor prep program (then called Structured Study Program) in November of 2018, entered the full-time immersive in February of 2019, graduated that May, stayed on in an associate instructor role until August, and started my position as a full stack engineer in September. I hadn't touched or read about code before November of 2018 (unless a few lines of HTML in middle school counts). If your plan is to put everything else on pause and give the program and job search 100% of you, it works.

I think the critical pieces to the success of the program are: its emphasis on both hard and soft skills, its focus on community-building around shared goals, and the pivot into career readiness and support as students approach graduation. 

Students spend as much time and energy leveling up their ability to communicate and collaborate with others, verbalize their technical work with accessible language, and iterate on their workflow and project planning as they do on leveling up their technical abilities. This is huge for both nailing technical interviews and performing on the job as a software engineer (which are two different beasts). It's not enough to be great at coding or communicating; both are necessary. Students are guided by technical instructors and counselors, each of who are passionate, dedicated people who genuinely care about their students' success. They do a great job of fostering a community, which certainly helps with motivation/morale, but also improves technical growth through collaborative approaches to the material. It also translates to professional networking. You're likely to meet amazing people going through such a rigorous program that places such high value on people skills. I certainly did.

The curriculum is iterative; both students and instructors are in tight feedback loops, and schedules and assignments are flexible to match the needs of students and industry trends. Side note: I think it's important to view the curriculum as a tool rather than a transformative environment-- you won't move through it and level up into a software engineer. You'll use it, along with Google and your peers, to figure out how to solve a million tiny problems and a few big ones. It (the curriculum) has some shortcomings, but I think the overall system works, and I think it serves its purpose. 

The career support is huge. The career counselors meet with you regularly after graduation to coach you through the job hunt, working on/vetting doc's like resumes, covers, emails, etc., and practicing interview talking points, compensation deflection and negotiation, and general mental model/strategy work. I found this critical to my success in the job hunt. Special shout out to Lena Johnson in the Remote campus.

Overall, the program provides what it says it will: the environment, tools, resources, and people for you to figure out how to software engineer.