Lighthouse Labs

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.