Lighthouse Labs

I read the bad reviews but thought they were outliers because there seem to be so many positive reviews on here. I joined Lighthouse in Toronto and was shocked at how awful this place was.

PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW CAREFULLY BEFORE PAYING $10K. I hope this review really helps make your decision. I wish someone had told me this before I paid 10K, quit my job and wasted both my time and money. When I was at the program, I felt that more than half of the students were NOT happy with their learning experience.

Curriculum: If you felt that you did not learn much from their prep course - QUIT and get your full refund right away. Their poorly-written materials only get worse. Their original content was short and difficult to digest. Usually, they would give you links to random blog posts, Khan Academy, or youtube videos and even Wikipedia (seriously). You would be confused due to the lack of organization. One could argue that it mimics the real world that is full of information. Well, maybe. But I think it will damage your foundations, rather than build them. The assignments were not well-structured. Some were vague. Some were pointless. Some confused you even more. You would also need to try not to be drown each day just to finish the assignments and learn barely nothing. Tech interviews and most of the things were decided on a day to day basis, meaning you'll know when your tech interviews are on that specific day, leaving no time to prepare. There is really no planning here.

Lectures: though selling it to everyone at all levels, the lectures in Toronto don't really build foundations and assume you know A LOT about web development already. An instructor also came to teach half an hour late more than 5 times - which was very unprofessional considering you paid 10K to learn. Though to be fair, some instructors were good. But your learning experience will be affected by the not-so-good ones and the lack of planning and consistency.

Job Support: Some of the resources or documents they shared were Google Docs where they copied and pasted popular websites you could spend your time on after the graduation. Also workshops with basic powerpoint slides that don't mean much. Depends on your luck, employers will come to the speed interview or demo day. Or, they might not.

Mentors: Some are very nice, some are impatient, some are there just to work on their projects. Your lucks. 

If you are still deciding, I'd recommend going to their demo day, and ask students questions. Look into their eyes and body language. Listen to their answers carefully. Probe for more. Ask if they would study at Lighthouse again, and why, or which kind of people Lighthouse would not be a good fit for.

Lastly, the job report. It was one of the factors I chose Lighthouse. But let's be realistic. After months trying to find a job, people will eventually find something whether it's coding-related or not. People have rents to pay. Read between lines and look at the statistics carefully. A lot of students are looking for a job after months.

I hope this review helps. I wish I had chosen other bootcamps.

I am not satisfied with their speed and curriculum. This course can be very stressful and demotivating for those who are brand new to development or IT. First week is JS fundamentals which was good as I had the exposure from prep course. 2nd week was terrible as we need to learn Server, express, EJS with routes and everything in few days. The app is itself very complicated and poorly structured. Almost every student complained for this poorly structured app, but they never improved/changed this project. Week 3 is client side app which is bit relaxed in terms of work. 4th week is midterm app where you expected to work on one of a 7 given projects in which they expect you to make the project end to end in 4 days (including weekend). If you are in a group of a newbie, then you would be very stressful and end up doing minimal and questioning yourself. If you have a member who has previous experience, then he/ she will do the majority of work and you will end up feeling inferior. In 5th week you are expected to learn concept of 4 years CS without ANY help. 6th Week is React where you work on front end, new concepts. 7 and 8th Week: Ruby which is all together a new game. You are given a full code without much understanding. Here, I was just dragging myself as I had paid heavily and I had to complete this. 9 and 10th week is final demo week, where they are expected us to design and develop a fully functional app by ourselves with no or very minimal help. 

Now, if you have prior exposure or experience in web development then it would be a great experience as this is very advance in nature and this curriculum try to teach you almost everything to start a carrier in web dev. However, if you are a newbie then there is a chance that you would get overwhelmed and start questioning your own capability. Few teachers are very good and know what they are talking, however few mentors don’t know what’s going on and confuse you even more. Make an inform decision. I saw almost every review is positive, I am not saying you would have the similar terrible experience like me. About placement its the worse, its been more than 10 months I haven't got any offer and they didn't help much in finding the job. If you are able to get the job in first 2 months then you are lucky and if you dont get the job in that period, then you are on your own.  Good Luck and make a vise decision!

I've thought about writing something for a long time. I even once wrote a detailed review covering everything I experienced but I deleted it because it just felt good to let it all out and decided I didn't need to share it. But I think after so long I feel that I should share my experience. 

This bootcamp was a complete waste of my time and money. They should have never accepted students with no previous coding background. I wish this did NOT accept me. The interview was pointless. They took anyone in... they were money driven. 

The cirriculum was information overload. It was impossible for me to absorb everything and hard to pay attention to an instructor that knows only a small percentage of students sitting infront of him are actually going to be developers- yup, true story. One of the dumbass instructors told a student they were crushing on exactly that. Super motivating, right? Fucking ridiculous. 

I don't even know WHERE to begin with some of the instructors. I felt bullied after I rolled over (this is after the first month and based on your test performnce, and you basically have to sit infront of a panel of 5 people and tell them why you should start from the beginning again- one of the fucked up teachers got MAD at me in-front of everyone and questioned my career aspirations as if I was not serious about the bootcamp- UGH....like thinking back I AM SO MAD I let someone talk to me like that...I sacrificed my fucking JOB and TIME to be there and this loser was questioning me). It was the head instructor at the time. He was extremely unprofessional and way too emotional. He was not fit to be a teacher. They made me feel like shit. Like I still can't believe I let a bunch of strangers trying to run this startup make me feel like that and question ME and ask ME if I really want to do this....all because I didn't meet their standards at a certain point in time (OH and it COST them for me to start over again, yeah they make you feel like you are a burden...lol how can you not laugh by this point of reading my exerperience... what a joke.  

Some of the teachers were SEXIST. Yeah, I said it. As a woman, I felt so unwelcomed in so SO SO many circumstances. The education manager was the fucking worst one of all. Ugh. After this long... I am still not over everything that happened. They had their favorites... the ones who knew wtf they were doing. Everyone else struggling they treated like garbage. I spoke with THREE OTHER WOMEN who ALL FELT THE SAME WAY. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Do you know how angry that made us after we all spoke to eachother about how we were treated??? IT WAS INSANE.  In fact, I QUIT trying because of Lighthouse. I literally felt worthless after that bootcamp. They make you think you are supposed to be a competent coder by the end of the course.

After a very long time, I decided to try again. I paid 15 dollars and signed up for the Udemy web development online course. Colt Steele is what you call a REAL TEACHER. He does a PHENOMENAL job teaching you how to code as if you have never done it before. I HIGHLY recommend you save your money and take this course and create your own learning path from there. I finally have my confidence back since doing this course.

I don't know what Lighthouse Labs is like today. I knew during the time I was there, a lot of students were afraid to speak up because they did not want to risk their chances of finding a job...for some reason we all thought it would ruin our reputation. But guess what...it was true. IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME. I started working for one of the mentors. The head sexist instructor mother fuc*** talked shit about me to the mentor. I was HORRIFIED. I've never had a panic attack but I think I did that day. I QUIT that job and never stepped foot inside the school ever since. 

I am fucking disgusted by the people running that place (at the time I was there). Again, I have no clue what it is like now. 

I hope others affected speak up because I am dumbfounded by all these 5 star reviews. These are NOT the same stories I have heard from other students. 

I decided to do Lighthouse Labs' Web Development bootcamp after realizing I didn't want to work in the field that I had just graduated university from. The whole experience was great - I have nothing negative to say. I really loved how it was fast paced and practise-based. It was definitely an intense course, but I learned so much, made some really good friends, and most importantly I got a whole new career that I love out of it. I would recommend doing the in-person course if possible (vs. satallite) only because you'd get to interact with the instructors more. In the satallite location, I could still message/video chat with them, but it'd be so much easier in person. 

I attended an 8-weeks (+ prep-course + demo) bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs. Their philosophy is to push you over your limits regardless of how much experience you have with coding. They did. This teaches you how to get started with solving a problem that coding is practically all about. The bootcamp was extremely intensive (9-to-9 plus many weekend days), so be prepared not to sleep for 2 months.

Pros:

• Mentors and instructors: great people with different backgrounds and styles
• Curriculum: good blend of technologies
• Project-driven approach: 4 individual and 2 group projects plus many minor exercises

Cons:

• Lectures could be more case-study-styled

I had a great experience at Lighthouse. I was in the July 2017 full-time web development cohort and graduated in September 2017. By December I had 3 job offers and selected the one I felt was best for my future. As far as I'm aware most of my cohort have obtained web developer positions at the time I write this (with a few who are still looking for jobs). 

The program itself is very good. They cover a lot of material in a short amount of time and it's fast paced. Do your prep-work (and if possible do MORE than what is required, it will definitely help). There is a heavy Javascript focus so it's best to try and learn as much JS as possible before starting. I did feel the curriculum would be better if it focused on fewer languages and frameworks and spent more time on each of those (sometimes less is more). For example, they go over jQuery but it's hardly used anymore. It would have been better if that time was spent on something like React or Angular which is much more useful these days. But from what I've heard they have significantly changed the curriculum since I graduated (they added an extra week), which hopefully has fixed some of those issues. Most of the instructors are great - they're knowledgeable and helpful. If there's one criticism it's that sometimes there were long wait times when asking for instructor assistance and not all instructors were knowledgeable on all the material (for example some were better at Javascript and others at Ruby). But overall, the instructors are great.

The real strength and value of Lighthouse is obtained from the network you create and the job assistance which is provided after bootcamp. They have a great alumni network that will constantly let you know about job openings at their companies through a Slack group. If you are determined to change your career and go into web/software development, you can definitely do it at Lighthouse (but it will take significant effort on your part as well, it's definitely not easy). I have an Engineering background so I understood the concepts but I know there were others who struggled. But even people who did not have a technical background were able to get jobs, so the program definitely works. The main thing is to have determination and put in the work. You're expected to continue coding and learning after graduation and you're also expected to apply for jobs on your own. The career services at Lighthouse is very good and they will set you up with interviews, just make sure you communicate with them after graduation. I had 5-6 interviews set up by Lighthouse in the span of 2 months, in addition to the interviews I got on my own. I also kept working on my developer skills and each interview helped me increase my knowledge and experience, it's definitely a process but as long as you keep at it, you'll be successful!

So I would definitely recommend Lighthouse if you're interested in starting a career in web development. 

Overall, this is a great program with great mentors! All other instructors were friendly and very knowledgable. 

Midway into the program, one of the instructors started to message me on social media and not just once but a few episode of inappropriate conversation including 'paying me to talk to him' and ' if I could wear a skirt for him ' . This program is male dominated,  both instructors and students.

Female students need to adapt to that environment and on top of that they need to feel safe in the area. After this incident had happend, I told the staff about it and surprisingly the education manager there told me that one of the staffs actually knew something similar had happend before in another co working space with the same instructor. They of course has already fired the instructor days after I told them.

However, what really irritates me was that they asked me "IF I TOLD ANYONE ELSE" . I do not see a reason why they need to know if I have told anyone. She explained that she wanted to contact those people to let them know that this has been handled. However,  It has been over a month but the manager still hasnt acknowledged those who I have told. 

Anyhow, instructor is gone and he will no longer be in the space.

First off, I want to metnion that I won't be providing a verified review as I would have to give my name, and I don't want to do that in case it means I would lose some of the access to job board that I have from LHL. I took LHL the web development bootcamp  in spring/summer 2017 and I'm still looking for a job. I'm not sure how they can advertise that >90% of their graduates land a position. I know for a fact that at least 6 of the students in our cohort have not found a job, and it's been over 2.5 months. 

I was a very good student also, so it's not like my skills aren't at the level they should be.

I feel that LHL has become very greedy in that they are having new cohorts every 4 weeks. So basically they're pumping out new devs every month. So there have been 3 cohorts graduate since I graduated. Those students are the ones who are getting jobs now, and all the "older" students are kinda pushed into the back of the line.

I have applied for jobs myself and gone to 3 job fairs but someone with as little experience as me is not really a prime candidate for these companies. My classmates who are still looking for jobs are in the same position. 

Anyway, I'd be vary of taking a bootcamp to get into the market at this time. The market is flooded by bootcamps such as LHL, who are just one of the many bootcamps in the city. 

The instructors are passionate about teaching, which is a huge plus. All the mentors and instructors are knowledgable in web development, and are mostly up to date with the latest Javascript technologies. I really enjoyed my experience in interacting and learning from the mentors and instructors. They are awesome, patient and nice. Shout outs to Karl, Kenny, Rohit for going above and beyond.

The curriculum is pretty good, though most of the material can be found online for free. Therefore the biggest benefit of going to Lighthouse is getting real time support from the mentors. However, sometimes there is a lack of mentor and me and my classmates ended up waiting for 60+ minutes to get support. This happnes ~once a week.

I would like to warn anyone having high hopes for the career services. It's subpar. I'll abbreviate the careers service advisor as C. When I attended the bootcamp, C clearly wasn't looking out for me or other job seeking students. C would softly pressure you into accepting any offers you get. She told me to not negotiate an offer (500/week, c'mon) even though I had numerous offers at hand. She also wanted me to go to a specific company, and reached out directly to the HR of that company to give me a call. I was pretty upset by this because I told C I would just send an email to turn down their offer, but she called them on my behalf. This wasn't just my experience, almost everybody in my cohort and the previous one felt like the career services at LHL is bad. You're better off applying on your own.

The instructors and staff are ok. They do what they are suppose to do, nothing extraordinary to pay ~$9450 for this bootcamp. You can learn from Treehouse or other sources like Lynda. The only thing Lighthouse provides is a community where you are loaded with task and bound to do it. You sit from 8 AM-9 PM or even beyond so you do assignment at fast pace. If you are a self discipline individual you don't need this. Student with no prior background in coding finds it really difficult. Lighthouse really doesn’t care about job assistance. I just got one job interview at a place where interviewer wanted someone with experience. Why was I sent? Once you graduate, you are on your own. They provide no assistance. The pace is too fast. The TAs are helpful but few of them get annoyed by students questions forgetting their job is not sipping free coffee and doing their own personal project. I must say the faculty is nice but how can they justify dollars you pay vs the course where the topics are just touched and no job assistance.

In short, this place is for coders with some experience and who can accelerate their learning in 2 months.  Newbies will get frustrated as instructors and TAs runout of patience. Only one of my cohort got a job, that one had previous experience. Wondering who writes all those good reviews? TAs and instructors themselves?

It really comes down to how hard you are willing to work and how fast you can pick up new concepts. If you cannot meet these two requirements you are going to have a hard very time here.

Lighthouse Labs teaches both Objective C and Swift. They teach Objective C first which has a bigger learning curve but once you grasp the core concepts everything falls into place and it really makes you appreciate Swift.

I’ve seen multiple students drop out throughout the course. If you can’t keep up they will roll you over to the next group. If you have some kind of coding experience you will have an easier time but even if you don’t I’ve seen people with zero experience rise to the top of the class. The mentor and instructors are very good but because they rotate their staff every day there were some ineffective mentors. For the most part most are helpful and very knowledgeable with many years of experience under their belts.

One question I get asked a lot is how is the career service at Lighthouse Labs. The answer is not good and not bad. It comes down to how you perform. Lighthouse Labs does a great job with it’s resume reviews and workshops. They run through a couple of tech interviews as well. Honestly, they are very different from the tech interviews that you will get in the real world. So be prepared to sit down and take some time to learn some additional computer science and software architecture concepts yourself. Don’t except to be ready for a real interview from those tech interviews alone. The team works very hard to setup demo days, speed dating and will sometime interviews but don’t rely on these too much. I would say you are 25% likely to get a job from these. You will need to put in the time to really hustle and get interviews the old fashion way. However, it kind of comes down to how amazing your final project is. Top 1-3 students get snatched up fairly quickly during demo days. The one negative side to Lighthouse Labs job service is that if you can’t find a job within the first month of graduating the support from Lighthouse is almost non existent. They need to find placements for their most recent grads so you will no longer be on their priority list.

So to summarize, having some coding experience will make life easier but not required. If you are a fast learner and can Google your way through everything you will have a great time here. Ask for help when you get stuck, the mentors and staff are amazing. Everything on the curriculum is useful in the real world. Try to be the top student in your group and build a kick ass app with tons of relevant frameworks (I suggest building something interesting with your own custom backend). Work hard, learn on your own time after graduating and hustle if a job is what you are after. If you just want to build your own apps or start your own business you will love being at Lighthouse Labs.

Having attended the Web Development Bootcamp, I wanted to write a review to expand a little on some of the other reviews' points of argument. Everyone who works at Lighthouse is extremely helpful and passionate about coding, which makes it easy to absorb that sort of attitude. However with some instructors there's a certain level of expectance of knowledge, despite them advertising there isn't actually any knowledge required to begin.

Because it's a 2 month program it's VERY accelerated, and it's just very hard to absorb all the information. Everyone works their tails off, and those who didn't, didn't make it past the tests. One negative experience I found was while there were only 3 'tests', and at the beginning every single instructor expressed how students would NOT be judged solely on tests, you discover (if you don't achieve the passing grade of 80%, and if you didn't get at least 90% students were 'advised' to take the retest) that if you don't score well on the tests, your future in the program was at threat.

The other problem I've found is the 100% job placement advertisement. While this is true, it is true for students who select a certain path for careers; Essentially if a student agrees to (lack of better term) sell their soul to the Career Services (CS), you are guaranteed job interviews, and at the end, a job. However, for the students who wish to either A) work in a specific city, or B) work a specific type of job only, you are basically on your own. I chose to return to the city I grew up in and I recieved little to NO assistance for job hunting relative to those who stayed in the host city and worked with CS. I was informed it was CS' job to send out resumes of students to various teams, companies, and jobs within my city, and each time I requested exactly WHICH jobs, I was just assured that my resume was one of the 'batch' that were sent out. Needless to say, all communication ceased once I left unless it was my own hunting on which jobs I was applying for via CS. I understand communication is a two-way street, but with that being said, I received NO updates from CS on the status of anything. Any emails that I recieved were replies to my own inquires. 

Lighthouse is a good program if you want to get an introduction to the industry, but evidently it does not guarantee you to keep pace. It's on the student to learn the extra bits and languages following the program, which can be difficult to say the least. Be prepared for a lot of extra work after the program to achieve a position that satifies your pre-program desires.