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Hack Reactor by Galvanize is an educator for rapid career transformation, offering software engineering bootcamps designed so that anyone with motivation can succeed, regardless of education, experience, or background. Hack Reactor by Galvanize bootcamps are challenging and designed to fit a student’s schedule and skill level. Bootcamps include a 19-Week Software Engineering Immersive with JavaScript and Python, designed for beginners, as well as a 12-Week Software Engineering Immersive.
Applicants to the 12-week Software Engineering Immersive need to pass a Technical Admissions Assessment (TAA), which tests for intermediate coding competency. There is a free, self-paced bootcamp prep course that can be accessed to learn the fundamentals of JavaScript. Those applying for the 19-week program do not need to pass the TAA or take any prep courses. Applicants to all programs need to pass an aptitude test, a brief typing test, and an admissions interview.
In addition to its software engineering programs, Hack Reactor provides a large network of professional peers, 1:1 coaching, mock interviews, job training, and more. All students graduate as autonomous, full-stack software engineers, fully capable of tackling unique problems and building complex applications on the job. Hack Reactor alumni join a diverse, engaged network of fellow students, instructors, staff, and alumni, including 14,000+ graduates at 2,500 companies.
Before I begin my review, I want to mention that I signed up for Hack Reactor not to seek engineering jobs, but to build my own startup projects. You can say that every review on here is a subjective assessment of HR. But since I don’t need anything from Hack Reactor after graduation (you know, things like job search support, recommendations, etc.), I feel my review is as impartial as it can get. Judge for yourself, of course.
Hack Reactor is the Navy SEALs of codin...
Before I begin my review, I want to mention that I signed up for Hack Reactor not to seek engineering jobs, but to build my own startup projects. You can say that every review on here is a subjective assessment of HR. But since I don’t need anything from Hack Reactor after graduation (you know, things like job search support, recommendations, etc.), I feel my review is as impartial as it can get. Judge for yourself, of course.
Hack Reactor is the Navy SEALs of coding schools. Navy SEALs is wonderful. But Navy SEALs is not for everybody. Neither is Hack Reactor. If you are driven, self-reliant, have a good head on your shoulders, and are prepared to go the extra 100 miles and more, Hack Reactor is your school. If you want work-life balance and are more comfortable having teachers spoon-feed you, or if you think by paying an expensive tuition you’ve somehow “paid the dues” and can just expect magical success thereafter, then look elsewhere. (Actually, if you are the last kind, no need to look. No school will fit your bill.)
I joined the HR Remote’s 19th cohort in September 2016, after picking up Javascript in June and finishing Fulcrum (HR’s pre-school program) in August. Before June 17th 2016, I had no experience in programming except some half-assed Matlab.
The admission interview for me was a drama-free event, because Fulcrum gave me a pretty efficient roadmap as to what to prepare for the interview. I also had the incentive to prepare hard, because their policy was if I didn’t get accepted by one of their schools, I wouldn’t get my Fulcrum tuition refunded.
The remote classes are all conducted online of course. I said “classes”. But actually you don’t spend too much time listening to a teacher talk. Most of our time is spent doing things, i.e. coding. This is something you don't get by just hacking together a study plan with online tutorials. Coding is an activity you learn by actually practicing it, not by watching someone else do it. And the HR's framework gives you the maximum hands-on opportunity to practice actual coding with challening, realistic projects.
For the first half of the curriculum, the schedule is broken down to mostly two-day sprints. On the first day of a sprint, you get the instructions about what you are expected to code/build. After exploring the problem on your own for a short period, you get together with a classmate (your sprint partner) and start writing code. You communicate with each other through video conferencing and share your code through an app that allows you to write to the same file online realtime. On the second day, after you’ve tried as much as you can at your tasks, HR releases suggested solution codes for the sprint. You study those. The day after that, the same process repeats, with a different coding partner and sprint subject.
HR provides some materials (e.g. videos) about the specific frameworks/concepts you should know in order to work on a sprint. But you are expected to go find whatever materials you need on your own to get the job done (e.g. googling, stack overflow, online tutorials, blogs, tips from your classmates, proceeds from selling your soul. Ok, the last one probably won’t help you much). You get some support from the help desk, which is manned by recent grads. But most time you won’t be given straightforward answers even if your helper knows the answer. You’re expected to problem-solve as much as possible on your own.
Now depending on your personality, this could be an unpleasant and chaotic experience (apparently the case according to some negative reviewers). Or it can be an exciting and efficient way to learn. You’re constantly being thrown in at the deep end and feeling like you’re drowning much of the time. At least that was the case for me, especially during Weeks 3-4. But I LOVED this style of learning. I loved the challenge, the autonomy, the discovery, and the fact that I’m in control of my own learning, all within a well-defined framework, so that I don’t proceed blindly while still having plenty of freedom. And the pressure to finish the sprints on time keep me on my toes all the time so that I really have to pick up new information at the maximum speed. Is it stressful? Yes. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. Is it amazing? YES!!
Again, I think how well you would take this learning approach depends on who you are. For example, there’re some negative reviews on here that said HR videos were not good, HR materials are not original, HR didn’t teach you enough, HR course hours are less then they claimed, etc. Here’s my reaction to those critiques. 1. Frankly I skipped half of those course videos. Because watching videos is slow and I prefer just googling some tutorials up fast so that I could get to the sprint. Those videos may be mediocre. But so what? You’re not supposed to get all you need from the HR materials. And to me, HR strikes a good balance between giving you directions and teaching you to be independent. You’re expected to find whatever materials that suit you to crack the sprint. 2. Same thing goes with the “they don’t teach you enough” claim. Guess what? HR taught me very little, except they taught me how to learn programming (my googling skill was improving at warp speed). And because of that, I learned what I needed on my own quickly. 3. As for course hours, I don’t see why that’s relevant because in HR I was spending 13 hours a day coding anyway, official course hour or not. Nobody tells you how much you should work in HR. It’s all about what you produce.
The bottomline is that your personality and values will determine your expectation for yourself and for HR, and that will determine your outcome. That's why if you decide to apply, make sure you're well prepared with at least the JS fundamentals and preferably went through, say, Free Code Camp, and built a toy app BEFORE you join HR. (Free Code Camp is a good pre-course for HR. I went through most of it before HR, thought I learned a lot, and then realized HR was on a whole different level.) You may cheat your way through the HR admission. But if you're not prepared enough, you'll struggle a lot because the curriculum moves fast. So do yourself a favor and come prepared. Otherwise you end up wasting your time in HR and wondering why you're not getting your money's worth! If that happens you have no one else to blame but yourself!
Not everyone is sufficiently prepared in my cohort or takes the HR learning approach well. By the halfway point there were several people dropped out from my cohort, voluntarily and involuntarily. Every time our class counselor announced a dropout, I would hear the Hunger Games theme music playing in my head (the one they played when a tribute went down). It’s not that far-off an analogy, except in the Hack Reactor Games, you don’t kill each other. You help each other instead.
This brings me to the next thing I want to tell you about— your classmates. My classmates are amazing people. And I suspect when I look back at this experience a few years from now, my classmates would be my biggest reward from HR. Although they are from all walks of life before joining HR, they share some commonalities— smart, determined, multi-talented, hard-working, extremely kind and helpful. And hilarious, too. I don’t remember another three months in my life when I had laughed so much every day, despite being under constant pressure to perform. And that is what HR surprised me the most. With the classes being remote, I hadn’t expected to build much relationship with fellow students. But after three months, the kind of community and bonding that had emerged from my cohort was nothing short of amazing. If this site has an option to rate “communities and peers”, I would have given it 10 stars!
If you ask any MBA graduates from Ivy League schools, many of them will tell you that the most useful thing they got out of their MBA is not academic knowledge, but a network of successful peers. I don’t think the tech industry is all that different. Having worked with my classmates, I have no doubt that many of them will be rising stars in their future jobs and become successful engineers. I’m proud to be their classmate. If I had paid the HR tuition just to gain this peer network of talented engineers and nothing else, I would have considered my money well spent!
There were a couple reviews on this site that mentioned “you learned more from your classmates than from HR”. For those reviewers, that was a negative thing. But by now, I’m sure you can already guess my position on this. That’s right, I learned a lot from my classmates. And I can’t be happier about that.
And finally, the result. I can’t tell you much about job search, because as mentioned, I did HR to build my own projects. And also, my cohort just graduated yesterday (Dec 10th 2016), and job search has just begun for most of my classmates. What I can tell you is that one person in my thesis group got hired already, for a job that pays >$100k, two weeks before graduation (He’s a smart guy, but had little coding experience before HR, and is definitely not top of class. He has great personality and people skills, though. And that’s quite important in job search). I’m not saying his case is the norm. It’s NOT. I just want to tell you what is possible.
As for me, after my thesis project, I decided to start building my app in Python, which does numerical stuff much better than Javascript. HR only used Javascript and there wasn’t a single line of Python/Django in HR materials. So You can say HR didn’t teach me enough. But when I started my project, I quickly discovered that picking up a new language is now no harder than picking up groceries. And if you had told me that three months ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. So you can say HR taught me a lot. It all depends on how you look at it and what’s important to you. And you can already guess what my preference is.
Again, whether HR is for you depends on the type of person you are. The same experience can be perceived in different ways. How do you find out which type you are? That’s easy. You’ve read my review. I gave you my most honest opinion from my perspective. You’ve also read some of the negative reviews from former students. I trust they gave their honest opinion based on their perspective as well. All you have to do is to look within and see which perspective you can most naturally identify with. That’s your type right there. Good luck!
How much does Hack Reactor cost?
Hack Reactor costs around $19,480.
What courses does Hack Reactor teach?
Hack Reactor offers courses like 12-Week Software Engineering Online Immersive, 19-Week Software Engineering Immersive with JavaScript & Python.
Where does Hack Reactor have campuses?
Hack Reactor teaches students Online in a remote classroom.
Is Hack Reactor worth it?
Hack Reactor hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 334 Hack Reactor alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hack Reactor on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Hack Reactor legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 334 Hack Reactor alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hack Reactor and rate their overall experience a 4.59 out of 5.
Does Hack Reactor offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like Hack Reactor offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.
Can I read Hack Reactor reviews?
You can read 334 reviews of Hack Reactor on Course Report! Hack Reactor alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hack Reactor and rate their overall experience a 4.59 out of 5.
Is Hack Reactor accredited?
Read details here: https://www.galvanize.com/regulatory-information
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