I went through Hack Reactor in 2014 and had a great time back then. My original experience with the program is less relevant than the more recent reviews you see, so I want to talk about job and negotiation help that I received 6 years after graduating during my third job search in 2020.

I received offers from Amazon, Box, Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Square and was having a hard time making the final call between joining Facebook and Netflix. I'd been discussing my decision in the alumni Slack group, and Marlene, the alumni director, reached out to me to see if she could help. It's definitely nice to have a total pro on your side when you're talking with recruiters. Marlene gave me some invaluable advice over the final week of my negotiations and helped me seal the deal with Netflix. Before all of this, I gained huge benefits by practicing for interviews with members of the alumni community. I can't think of a better group to be in to get such a good pulse on working in the tech industry.

All this to say, Hack Reactor isn't just a one-time thing you go through for a few months and forget about. There's a huge and growing community of people who want to help you throughout your career, and every year, I'm more glad I joined this community.

I have done a lot of educational programs, but this was by far the best educational experience of my life. The program is so hands on and concrete--there's no extra stuff that you can just coast through. Instead, you learn actionable skills and apply them immediately on projects. Staff is brilliant and very good at what they do, curriculum is well-tailored for anyone trying to get into the coding field, and facility was clean and well-maintained. You graduate with a body of work that you can use to start applying immediately. It's all full-stack JavaScript, which is good for applying to start-ups and more "high tech" (Google, Paypal, etc) but they teach you fundamentals well enough that I actually ended up with two Java developer job offers in the middle of the pandemic! Best part of the program is the people though--just incredible and smart people who you get really close to. Can't wait to see what they end up doing!

I'm halfway through the remote part time program and I am 100% happy with my decision to go to Hack Reactor. The staff are fantastic, the curriculum is challenging, you learn rapidly, and fellow students are great. The culture and community aspects are even better than I could have hoped for. The staff are equal parts demanding and encouraging. The organization is constantly tweaking the curriculum and teaching methods to improve student outcomes. Above all they genuinely care about each and every student and are so supportive. 

That said... it's HARD. Even if you are a working dev who wants to level up your skills I promise it will be challenging. I came into HR as a beginner so for me, meeting the basic minimum requirements is plenty hard. But each project has advanced content and if that isn't enough there's another section called 'nightmare mode.'  The staff will make sure you are being challenged - but for most of us the basic curriculum and speed at which you need to finish things is plenty.

I love the part-time program. Some of my cohort mates have kids. Some are working full time. Some are managing both. The part-time program is the exact same curriculum as the full time program but instead of doing it over 13 weeks you do it over 36 weeks. There are 20 hours per week of time required. So you can keep your job and do Hack Reactor at the same time. Personally I'm not working while going through Hack Reactor. I'm an older student (almost 50) and having more time for my brain to absorb content is helpful. 

HR helps prep you for coding interviews by requiring you to practice toy problems. For full time folks you'll do one every day. For part-time you usually do two per week. By the time you finish HR you will have done 60 of them. So they build in interview prep into the entire program. 

The curriculum is frequently frustrating but I have to admit it's absolutely necessary. Having studied the best way to teach coding, HR has learned that it's through doing not lectures. There are some lectures which will give you a base to jump off of but every new project you're jumping in the deep end. So frequently students feel frustrated. But it's also in that frustration that you learn. There are plenty of tools to help you get unstuck and they teach you to use them. You can schedule office hours with staff or call the help desk when you're stuck. Help desk is great. It's staffed by recent graduates who just went through what you are going through. They are trained to not take away too much of your pain (since that's where learning happens) but rather to help point you to documentation or ask you questions about your code. 'What is line 12 doing? Why do you think that? Have you checked to make sure it's really doing what you think it's doing?' etc. You also do pair programming in most of the junior phase (first half of the program). This brings its own frustrations but also joys as you work with a partner to complete a project. You learn how to work with people who think differently than you do. 

I was skeptical at first about the remote program. In fact I went to the in person program in Seattle in Februray 2020 to start. After three days I decided I needed to bone up on my JS skills more. So I rolled back to the next cohort. Then COVID hit and my housing situation changed and I was no longer in commutable distance for the in person program (and they ended up having to go online b/c of Covid anyhow). Well I have met some amazing friends in the remote program and I think it's just as good as the in-person program. I probably would not have believed that if I hadn't experienced it for myself. There are some big pros too - like you don't have to commute so the time you save packing food, traveling, etc can be used for sleeping. This is especially important if you do the full time program. And you really do get to know people, not just from your cohort but from the 5 other remote part time cohorts as well - watching people from more senior cohorts graduate and get six figure jobs is inspiring.  

HR's #1 goal is to turn out autonomous engineers and I believe they do a great job. Is it the best bootcamp out there? I think without going to more than one bootcamp it's hard to say. But is it a top, even elite, bootcamp? Absolutely.

If you're already working in tech, and are concerned about the opportunity cost of taking time off to deepen your technical expertise, I suggest that you take the leap. Prior to Hack Reactor I worked in a traditional software sales role (in the marketing automation space). I chose to go to hack reactor primarily out of curiosity, and looking back 5 years, I am happy to say that the ROI was definitely there for me. 

Coming out of Hack Reactor, I did a short stint as a programmer at a small startup and then went on to work at GitHub as a Solutions / Sales Engineer. I've now been at GitHub for the last 4 years, and Hack Reactor was an amazing launching point for me to develop the skills and curiosity that I use in my job every day. 

The community I gained from Hack Reactor has also been huge for me — I still talk to several of my fellow students almost daily. It's been a great resource for continued learning and idea-sharing. I'd like to also give a special shoutout to Marlene Fong, who is a cornerstone of the Hack Reactor community. Marlene helped me with my two job hunts coming out of Hack Reactor and has been there as a great alumni resource for negotiating promotions / other offers. 

It's hard to sum up what Hack Reactor has meant to me in just a few paragraphs. As a matter of fact, I've been putting off writing this review because every time I start I get overwhelmed with emotion.

Hack Reactor enabled me to turn my life around. Not just in terms of a career, but in every way possible. 

It is, by far, one of the most rigorous programs in this space. I know this because since graduating in May 2017, I have taught, mentored and worked with other graduates from other bootcamps. I won't mention the schools by name, but suffice it to say that they're also fairly well known. But an established name doesn't necessarily equate to consistent quality, as I came to discover. 

As a matter of fact, many graduates from other bootcamps envied me for the continuing community support I received well past graduation. For example, I'm currently in my second job search and Marlene, the Alumni Director, has been a stellar point-of-contact in helping me stay emotionally grounded as well as connecting me to exciting job leads. She treats all alums like her babies and you won't be able to resist her maternal affection.

And that's my point: Hack Reactor is filled to the brim with Marlenes. Just talk to former technical mentors, or even the CEO, Harsh Patel, and you'll instantly know that you aren't just a paycheck to them. They put all of themselves into this work, because they truly want to see you succeed. When you graduate from Hack Reactor, you aren't just walking away with skills for a new career, you're also joining a diverse and empathetic community of top notch software engineers, from places like Square, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. (Seriously, the list is long)

This is not to say there aren't flaws in the system. Of course there are. But even when someone falls through the cracks, I've seen Hack Reactor put their best effort into catching you at the bottom and lifting you back up. I don't expect perfection out of anything, but at least they're always striving for it. To me, that's what matters. 

I graduated Hack Reactor in 2015. I wanted to share my current perspective on the program, and how it has affected my life and career.

HR is an excellent choice if you can get in. It's the real deal.

Curriculum

The HR team cares about their students. Once you’ve made it into the program, they will bend over backwards to help you succeed through the curriculum, during the job search, and beyond.

I was used to intense academic environments where everything hinges on tests that rely on memorizing enormous amounts of facts. I started HR all fired up to apply the same intensity I applied in university to the HR program, and then I saw quickly how different HR is.

In contrast to my academic experiences, Hack Reactor is focused on you learning optimally in a small group setting without grades. The environment is supportive and encouraging, which helps students get through the challenges.

Time Commitment

I personally never had any issue with the per-day time commitment. I structured my life around the program, so during the program there was nothing else really going on in my life. My friends knew I would be busy and to expect delays (sometimes weeks) to respond to a text. I kept up exercise, healthy eating, etc. during the program which I think was important.

The time commitment is a bit like going to a foreign country to learn that country’s language. Yes, you can absolutely learn a foreign language to a near-native level without having stepped foot in the country. However, being in the country forces your mind to learn the language as a survival mechanism - supplemented by language materials like courses. In a similar way, HR is like going to a foreign programming land where there’s a beautifully sloped learning path to learn the language. When you stop, take a breath, and look around, you’re completely surrounded by others speaking this strange language. The technical jargon and problem solving is inescapable in the best way possible.

Does HR prepare you for the job search?
Yes, definitely. I haven’t looked at the HR site in awhile, but I’m sure it describes how they prepare you for algorithm problems, whiteboarding, discussing your accomplishments, etc. This is true. If you want to aim for the top companies like Google, Facebook, etc. then you’ll need extra studying, but you’re well prepared to put in that extra study and have incredible momentum as you graduate HR that you can utilize for it.

Does HR prepare you for the job?
Yes, even more so than the job search. The curriculum and experience deliver key components that I look for in a new team member: general problem solving ability, communication, familiarity with the JS ecosystem, JS knowledge, and (most importantly) the ability to learn new things very quickly and enthusiastically. HR filters, somehow in ways I don’t understand, for the seeds of these qualities during the admissions process. Then, somehow in more ways I don’t understand, they nurture those qualities over 3 months into an engineer capable of contributing to a team almost immediately. After a few years as a software engineer, I now realize how incredible and rare this feat is.

Absolutely. I still use the skills I learned at HR to debug and pick up new technologies quickly. Both of these are invaluable. I’m sure there are other skills that I’ve internalized and don’t realize I use or did not realize they came from HR. The HR curriculum is an excellent foundation for a career.

How much did going to HR change your life?

Going to HR allowed me to fundamentally change the direction of my life for the better. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity. I still proudly wear my Hack Reactor t-shirt and talk about HR with anyone that asks.

The HR alumni community is great! It’s a genuine community that is a great place to ask questions about interviews, frameworks, career direction, etc. Marlene Tang, the Alumni Director, has had a powerful positive influence on the alumni community and helped so many people achieve their goals. She's oft-praised, but it's hard to describe just how much of a positive impact she's had on so many graduate's lives.

In-person immersive experience
The in-person HR immersive experience was probably the most concentrated 3 months of fun that I've ever had. I look back fondly on the experience, and especially my amazing cohort-mates that are still friends.

I just want to leave a shout-out to Marcus Philips and Fred Zirdung in case they ever see this. They’re both enormously talented and knowledgeable teachers. I still think of Marcus’s jokes after all these years and they make me laugh. Fred was my first view of the professional expert: humble, deep knowledge, and incredible communication skills to explain complex concepts in a simple way calibrated for the listener. Thank you both, and of course Marlene.

Attending HRs Bootcamp was one of the best decisions in my adult life. The staff was so helpful and the curriculum is very relevant to industry needs. I was able to find a job as a full-stack engineer within four months of graduating. Tip: make sure you have Javascript fundamentals down, as you'll get more out of the course.

To truly provide my experience, let me start with some context: I attended another boot camp and felt like I was pumped out of a factory. I was able to obtain a job but I was creating personal technical debt. I was barely getting by with the skills I gained but with no foundational knowledge. It was creating a huge stressor in my life that I had decided to attend another boot camp. An advanced boot camp. I truly mean it.

There is an unofficial motto that I heard about Hack Reactor. "We don't take you from 0 - 60, we take you from 20 - 120."  Truer words hasn't been spoken about a coding boot camp. From the moment you reach out to the program to the day you graduate, you are familiarize with the process of applying and working within the software engineer industry. As a veteran, I was able to use the newly introduced Vet Tech, which saved me from using my own funds and my GI Bill. To be recognized by the VA as a prestigious school definitely reassured me, as well.

Prior to the being admitted to the school, there is a prep course, a technical interview and pre-course work. The school shows that they are looking for a high-level of commitment and allows like-minded students to be together for 13 weeks.

The students' dedication is definitely tested with its' 6 days a week and 11 hour days. The course is split into two phases: junior and senior. In the junior phase, it lays down exceptional, foundational knowledge regarding data structures and algorithms that you will utilize for the rest of your career. Senior phases does not just focuses on entry-level skills but it covers senior-level skills from infrastructure to operations and system design. The curriculum adapts to the current market needs understanding that technology changes frequently while maintaining the core foundational classes..

The instructors are the same instructors that teach every cohort with its' rigorous curriculum, which establishes a strong baseline amongst graduates. It allows collaboration/mentorship across multiple cohort graduates, creating a vibrant and progressive alumni community. For veterans, At one point of the course, there were administrative problems with the VA and I was concerned about my enrollment... One of my instructors took on the additional responsibility as the company VA liaison to ensure I continued my education. Wouldn't you want to be in a community like this? (Thank you if you're reading this!) Even today, I can reach out to my instructors and they have never turned down an opportunity to assist me.

The alumni community is active, all the time. There are topics about forming study groups to re-solidify their base knowledge to prepare for an interview, collaborate on a new technology such as AI or ML, or even just network for happy hour. I may not have met a lot of them but I know they are hard working, smart individuals just from the fact that they've passed the assessment to be admitted into the course, in the first place.

I put N/A for job assistance because I was able to secure a job during my senior phase with the new added knowledge from Hack Reactor. Today, we are right at the 6 month mark from graduation and we are at 95% employment rate as software engineers. In my previous boot camp, it has been a year out and only half were employed and out of those half, majority were not employed as software engineers. 

I don't regret taking another 3 months to attend Hack Reactor. It was well worth the investment. Make the right choice, if you are reading this as prospective student!

I graduated from Hack Reactor in late January 2020. For context for this review, I came into the program with 8 years of work experience in a STEM field. But basically no code experience outside one intro class in college a decade prior. My classmates had a large spectrum of past experience, from those with months or years of exposure to people without college degrees who had never coded before.

Curriculum: The curriculum is broken down into two halves - "junior" and "senior". In the "junior" half, we pair-programmed in 2-day sprints. Looking back, I think the topics of the sprints were spot-on for learning the important topics in the job market. The structure of the sprints also emphasized the right mindset - figuring things out yourself (being autonomous without spoonfed instructions/answers) and working collaboratively with a partner. On the "senior" side, we worked on 3 meaty projects that served as most people's resume centerpieces upon graduation.

Instructors: The instruction in the program included Zoom conferences by very experienced senior staff that we did not interact with outside of those lectures, as well as occasional workshops by the cohort's Technical Mentor(s) who were the assigned staff for our cohort. I found most of the Zoom lectures to be high quality though I found the electronic format less effective than in-person could have been. The cohort staff were supportive and really cared about students' success, but the philosophy of the bootcamp was to learn things on your own, so while I learned some from the cohort staff, it didn't become a centerpiece of my experience. I actually felt like a lot of learning was through interacting with my peers. So I would give 5 stars to our wonderful, hardworking staff but 4 stars for the program structure which I felt lacked direct interface with senior technical experts that could provide code review feedback (our cohort staff were recent graduates of the program and very sharp but lacked the battle scars to convey best practices from years of coding in industry).

Job Assistance: They will not get you a job. That will be on you. But they will provide lots of support in the form of a job coach, support group, and active Slack community that posts resources and word-of-mouth job postings. The job hunt was grueling and in my opinion, in some ways harder than the program itself, because there were so many factors that were more about luck and timing than skill, and especially exacerbated due to the exceptional circumstances of trying to find a job amidst the COVID-19 global pandemic (hiring freezes, a flooded candidate pool due to recent layoffs, fully remote processes negating hard-earned whiteboarding practice/skills).

Overall Experience: Overall, Hack Reactor was a great way to learn all I needed to pivot into Software Engineering. I personally would not have been able to get to where I am now without it. And one of the best parts for me was meeting a group of new lifelong friends.

I recently attended the Hack Reactor Extended Immersive program in the Fall of 2019. (HRR41) Prior to this, I have been and still am a professional musician and teacher. Originally I was set to attend the onsite program in Los Angeles, but the commute was rough and I had already met some awesome people in the initial extended portion who were doing remote, so I took the plunge. I decided quite late and the cohort was already full, but the remote team was willing to accept me. I met the counselor, Annah, and right away I knew I had made a good decision. She was so welcoming along with the whole team and I felt like I was in good hands. When we met Robin, the lead tech mentor, we all were immediately blown away. This guy is smart. He doesn't just know code. He knows right away the weaknesses in YOUR code. He knows how to push you to learn the hard parts that you may be struggling with. In this way, the program felt very tailored to ME. In addition, Annah was right there to push me on my soft skills. I tend to be a perfectionist, and she made me realize that coding can be a challenge, but it is about the long haul. She taught me to pace myself and to keep calm and centered. Hack Reactor is not an easy program. But if you find you have a passion for coding, or just find it fun, you can succeed. In addition, the career services are amazing at Hack Reactor. I consider myself to be a self-motivated learner, but I would never have had the confidence to enter the field if not for this amazing part of the program. Shout out to Lena, she is so amazing. She helped with my resume, confidence, and gives you the tools to succeed in your job search. She really imparted a "make them say no" approach which I believe helped me land my first job. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a coding challenge for a position at Amazon Game Studios. Immediately it felt like a Hack Reactor sprint, and even though I didn't really know how to start, the feeling was familiar. I worked hard, got through the interview process, and ultimately got the position. It has been such a rewarding career and I love what I get to do for a living. If you have a passion for coding and are considering a boot camp, Hack Reactor is amazing. It literally changed my life. Big thank you to Robin, Annah, Lena, and Hack Reactor for helping me reach my goals.

If you are looking to break into Silicon Valley, Hack Reactor is a great way to do it. 

You master JavaScript, learn how to best work as a team and deep dive into data structures/algorithms to pass tough interview processes. On top of that, Hack Reactor takes many hard-working, dedicated students, so the connections you make along can be even more valuable than the coursework.

Once you graduate, the school just doesn’t forget about you. Hack Reactor has an excellent Alumni Director in Marlene Fong, who stays with each student the entire way in finding employment. Just wish I didn’t take this long to say thank you to her, because she and the school overall made unbelievable difference to the direction of my career. 

Keep up the great work.

For context, I graduated in 2015 and I realize the school, curriculum, and even the industry have changed since then.

Hack Reactor radically shifted the entire trajectory of my life in the most positive way. I was able to go from being a "failed" artist to beginning my career as a Software Engineer. I look back on the time spent there as one of the pivotal moments in my life. 

I had expected the program to be challenging, but honestly, nothing prepared me for how much of a whirlwind of work it would be. It was easily the most challenging educational endeavor i'd ever taken on. While it easily pushed me to my limits, being surrounded by equally motivated, driven, and enjoyable cohort-mates helped me tackle the challenges presented by the curriculum. 

More importantly, the ongoing career support through the Alumni program, facilitated by the one and only Marlene, has been an absolute game changer that continues to pay dividends all these years later. Marlene isn't just one of the most caring and compassionate people I know, she has more experience helping people prepare and secure jobs than anyone I have ever met. Every question, concern, and anxiety that surrounds the job search are deftly answered by her and often with suggestions of entirely different approaches I never would have imagined on my own. 

Hack Reactor gave me an opportunity and a career I would have never imagined for myself and I will forever be indebted to the program for what it provided me.