Sabio

If you're anything like I was, you have zero experience writing code and don't know where (and if it's even a good idea) to invest your time and money learning to do so. I had plateaued in my previous career and was looking for something that could offer me more, both in personal satisfaction and financially. Working in tech seemed like a far-fetched idea – I had always assumed you had to be some sort of genius to do so. The fact is, you don't. 

Sabio starts you off two to three times a week in Pre-Work. This is where you learn Javascript and C# fundamentals. This is also the hardest part of the camp (though, it's not technically part of the camp) as you have little to no experience coding, and might struggle to build momentum and keep positive. I was surprised to learn that most people attending Pre-Work had already quit their jobs and committed to these sessions full-time. I couldn't afford that and was still working 40 hours a week. Having one foot in and one foot out, I wasn't allowing myself to fully digest the information being presented. Thankfully, when it came time to take the assessment test, I was able to demonstrate enough skill to enter the official camp. This is where you really start to shine.

I mean, you have to. You're writing code all day every day. And that's the beauty of it. On top of that, and one of the reasons why I ultimately chose Sabio, is that you're working on a real-world product. Your cohort is paired with an entrepreneur and his/her pitch, and over the duration of the camp you're developing an MVP (minimum viable product). Your instructor will assign you tasks in various parts of the tech stack, and week after week your product will slowly begin to materialize. You'll be amazed at what you're able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. I believe this to be a huge testament to not only the curriculum Sabio has developed, but the instructors Sabio has chosen to mentor the students. I firmly believe that just because you can do something does not mean you can teach it. My instructor (shout-out to John Lee) was always really good at providing overall context, some direction on what to research, and then sending you off to work through it. 

I'm sure this review echoes a lot of others in this forum. If you're even remotely considering a bootcamp as a means to a career change, I say do it –– it'll change your life. And if you're even remotely considering Sabio as your bootcamp of choice, the best thing you can do is go to one of the info sessions. There you'll meet Gregorio, one of the co-founders, who shoots straight from the hip and will answer any and all of your questions. It was after attending one of these sessions that I knew Sabio was for me. Gregorio is very passionate about breaking down barriers, building community, and getting you to the place you want to be if you're willing to put in the effort.

** if you have your life together this review is not for you but feel free to read it anyway**

In the years before sabio I had hopped from path to path, never fully satisfied with where my life was headed. I had studied accounting, fashion, communications, and felt like i was starting to run out of options. I hated college, and when I got a job in a field I thought I would really enjoy, I hated working too. So I quit my job and was feeling completely and utterly stuck, until I saw a particularly terrible movie in December 2016, where a character in the movie said "Do your self a favor and learn how to code". So I thought, hey I'm not doing anything, why not? I took a code academy module on javascript and had so much fun solving problems with code. Long story short, I found Sabio and their glowing reviews online and about half way into one of their info sessions, I decided that I was going to go to code bootcamp. 5 months later I have a job as a web developer and I couldn't be happier. Was it easy? No. Would i recommend it to everyone? No. Would i do it all over again? Absolutely. I've made life long friends and i honestly truly wake up so happy every morning because I get to do something that i love everyday. I just want to say thanks so much to Sabio, to my Cohort, and to Jeremy, my instructor,  at the Newport Beach campus for everything they've done. 

Summary: Would wholeheartedly recommend. Best investment in myself I've ever made; well employed with a fantastic organization. 

Most enter into a coding bootcamp looking for a second chance, plain and simple. Whether it be to increase earning potential or seek a more interesting field, the core theme that unites the Sabio community is the fact that everyone who comes through this bootcamp is striving for something better. And Sabio's commitment to this community is apparent from the way it operates: (1) hiring senior level developers with a propensity for mentorship to be their instructors, (2) professional development courses after graduation to continually expand skills while employed, (3) extensive job support via resume building and challenging mock technical interviews, and (4) encouraging of fellows to provide curriculum feedback in order to evolve with changing needs. 

Holistically speaking, Sabio was the most complete bootcamp I found when stack ranked against the others I had vetted. From the foundation building prework to the live project experience gained from working on a real proof of concept for an entrepreneur, this bootcamp had already outshined most in the area. However, it was the community Sabio breeds along with their proactive job support after graduation that had won me over. The founders and instructors sincerely care about your success and that's evident in the way they communicate to and guide you. Ultimately though, it's up to you to leverage the knowledge and experience at your disposal to grow yourself; as the old adage goes, "you get out what you put in". Sabio has been a second chance to myself and many others and as such, should be treated as one—work hard, talk code, and forge bonds. Now go make something happen!

Short Version: Top-tier school, incredibly supportive community. I had full-time work within 6 weeks of graduation at $40/hour. Highly recommend!

I spent a while visiting bootcamps before commiting to Sabio. It was one of only a handful of bootcamps that didn't seem a little fishy (e.g. hiring recent grads to teach). Throughout my experience with them, Sabio's program was exceptionally well thought out, explained, and executed. The staff and instructors were uniformly excellent, both in teaching and in creating a supporting community. The mistakes in the program were minor, and when they occured the Sabio staff recognized them and discussed with us how to improve the experience. 

The part-time prework gives you a good chance to sound out the school and its vibe before making a large commitment, and if you're like me and don't have prior coding experience, the prework gives you an idea of whether you like doing it. The coursework itself is very rigorous (I did the .NET course). It's a full commitment during the 3-month cohort period, so I'd only do this if you're able to put most everything aside for 3 months. I was well prepared by the work itself though. When I got to my first contract gig after Sabio, at an investment bank downtown, they decided I knew what I was doing better than the project lead, so they fired him and put me in his place. Along with two other Sabio grads we were able to get the project back on its feet and approved by management to continue.

Sabio does a very good job of transitioning you at the end of the course into job hunting mode. They give you a lot of confidence that it's doable and they actively follow up with you during the job hunt to help you improve. It's during the job hunt that the strength of the community really shines through. There are a ton of people there willing to help and the community of graduates is large enough that you can get a good number of leads through it (that's how I got my first job). I had full-time contract work within 6 weeks at $40/hour and was offered employment after another six weeks at $80K. Even once I was working the staff kept communicating to see how things were going and help when I got stuck.

Summary: I would recommend Sabio in a heartbeat to anyone who can make the 3 month commitment. Really, you just don't find places like this very often. 

It's now been three years since graduating from Sabio, and through the frequent professional development courses, they have been a tremendous help in advancing my career. From fireside chats with the top in the industry (Github, Facebook, and Snapchat just to name a few)  to introducing new languages and methods to improve my skills has been a tremendous help. I'm already enthused for what they do with just becoming a developer, but with introducing use cases for implementing Docker and useful ES2015 tips they continue to show that they value my success long after graduating. 

I'm a Navy Vet and began this bootcamp in May 2022 using the VetTec benefit. Generally, any organization wants to make a good impression so they post everything positive going on, give you a good intro to what you'll be getting into and paint a wonderful picture of what it could be like in the end. 

To anyone wanting to enroll in a software developer bootcamp, I HIGHLY recommend you do not choose Sabio UNLESS you have a decent amount of experience, you just want some extra help and have no kids, no spouse, family, nothing to worry about. I'm talking 1 + year experience as well, not 2 weeks of html and then you start this.

You're expected to get on their "Q" a minimum of 2 times a day where you ask questions if you need extra help. The problem is, it can take up to two hours to get a question answered. When you do get on the Q, most likely someone from an older cohort will answer it for you and you end up more lost then when you got on. I literally prayed I would get specific Instructors (4 to be exact) to answer my Q because the others would just waste their and my time and I'd come out worse. If you didn't get your 2/day, you get your notice of probation.

You're expected to code 25 hours a week minimum and out of those 25, 2 hours minimum need to be done on Saturdays. I have no issues with this, If you didn't do your time then you got a notice for this as well.

The first 4 weeks of Sabio were decent, just your basic hmtl/css/javascript. You get your lectures every week and you're following the curriculum. After that, it's tough! The lectures dissappear and you really need to rely on your cohort to help you out. It's like after the first 4 weeks they expected us to be these competent devs, they gave minimal help and thank goodness for the cohort because to be honest, I would've probably got dropped for not doing well enough if it wasn't for other students. The thing is, I expected that from instructors, not other students. If you have an institution and you're being paid to teach me something, then I want you to teach me, not other students who also don't have experience like myself. 

Any 17 week course boot camp is going to be a challenge though, it's not like Sabio is special for being a difficult bootcamp. The problem is how Sabio is run, very mediocre I'd say. After the weeks went on and speaking to many students, there seemed to be a trend on how most of us felt. It was lack of real guidance and the communication between instructors and us was just terrible.

Apparently I racked up too many probation notices and was let go, the problem I have with this, is the day I finally decided to speak up about this to Gregorio I get dropped the next week. My last zoom call was him letting me know that I've been in the program long enough to be able to do the job search part on my own. I tried to reason with him because I don't like to leave things unfinished. The problem with reasoning with Greggy is that if you put yourself in a vulnerable position, he tries to take advantage of that and makes you feel like you're the one who's wrong and he's doing everything right. I did this before but this time I wasn't going to, I began to critique Sabio and he couldn't handle the truth, I was being honest and wanted to speak my mind, professionally of course. He cut me off shortly and didn't even let me finish half of what I wanted to say and wanted to end the zoom call. I had no choice but to leave without letting him know.

Sabio prepares you to look like a real SWE/SDE and hey, if you want to look the part but not perform when the time comes, this is the place for you.

Instead of a bootcamp, I would have gone on udemy.com, pay for the courses on their website which won't even cost a third of what the cost is here and use 4 hours minimum a day to become a developer. You'll get better guidance, be able to make your own schedule and you'll actually undertand what you're doing and why you're writing this code.

I began with Sabio and was dismissed from Sabio in a matter of weeks. For starters, I'll state what is expected out of you so you have an understanding of that should you decide to proceed. 

Hours are from 9am-9pm Monday-Friday and 9am-3pm Saturday. You will have a stand up at 9:15 to state what you have accomplished, what you will do in the next 24 hours and what your blockers are (any issues stopping you from proceeding in your work). Then after this meeting(about 10minutes), you are released to watch prerecorded videos of Gregorio (co-founder) explaining a concept, you are instructed to code along while he types like its a race(fast) and you are trying to type along and understand the concepts being taught. You will be given an assessment about each week after you passed the pre work phase and if you do not pass 2 within a 30 day window, then you will be expelled.

This sounds fair right? Well thats why they are so successful in being deceitful.
I was dismissed from Sabio about 6 weeks in for failing 2 assessments, and I was one amongst many. Not only were the assignments being assigned far too soon for us to grasp the material, but for those that had technical issues, illnesses, or any reason that you would not have been up to speed with the material that was out of your control, you were still required to pass the assessment or you get dismissed.     

In my situation, I was given instructions to change my computer file paths in order to avoid future issues-as my instructor worded it. This only made my technical issues worse, but I wouldnt know that until later. I later "jumped on the "queue" (a phrase we use where we submit a question ticket and get a response in about 30-45 minutes for a zoom call to address a question)  to fix the issue but the second instructor made it worse. I continued to have issues and reached out for help many times and when I expressed my concern that I would not be ready for the assessment because of the issue (which was caused by an instructor) I I was consistently told I was going to be okay. I was consistently  told to get on the queue and my issue would be resolved, that I just need to ask more questions, however, I was still dismissed. 

For Veterans : After learning more about others that experienced the same thing, I learned that Sabio takes advantage of veterans. They take their VETTEC, and then drop you and ask you if you'd like to use another educational benefit. It almost feels like they drained your credit card and then ask if you have another so they can drain that one too. There was another student before me that warned people against Sabio but I unfortunately got the notice too late. Please do not use your benefits at this school, once you are dropped, you cannot use VETTEC for another 18 months. Do more research, as you are doing now, and please do not make the same mistake I did and use your VETTEC or any other benefit somewhere else that is more creditable. There are many out there. It is not worth the housing allowance you will receive if you cant finish and then be unable to use the benefits for 18 months.      

Okay so I have been out of cohort for a few months now after graduating from Sabio and I've had a good amount of time to digest everything I have done in the past few months while at Sabio. I was looking for a in-depth review prior to starting the program and wasn't able to find much about the program as a whole so I will do my best to inform my future bootcamp grads what they should and shouldn't expect from Sabio! My review will be filled with my honest and transparent thoughts on the program. I will say I checked multiple bootcamp sites for reviews and almost every positive review could be found verbatim on another website which is still weird to me, but I'm not exactly sure how that works. Just know this review is from a real person that attended and graduated Sabio!


So after 3 intense months attending & graduating Sabios fullstack remote course I've decided to break down this review into what I consider the four main pillars of their program from my experience! The instructors, the curriculum, the final project & the beloved "Q" in no order. So after you have attended a info session and probably met with Gregorio or Liliana and been accepted into the program, you are now enrolled and waiting for the camp to start. Expect to hit the ground running on day one. They will meet with everyone and give you a roadmap of what to expect in the coming months. If you have no experience in developing like myself this program will be tough and frustrating but also equally rewarding. You will meet everyone from your cohort and get assigned your first tasks.

The Curriculum-

You will start out slow learning the basics of whatever stack you choose to pursue. For myself it was full-stack meaning I would be learning almost a new language, framework, or library every week. As soon as you start gaining a grasp on one thing you will be tossed into another section of their program to learn another thing! Get used to it because that's the reality of trying to learn code in a short amount of time. A lot of things I learned early in the program I had to come back and restudy later down the line just because some of the sections where just way too tough & fast paced for me to fully understand what I was coding. There will be endless hours of video you are expected to watch and at times it was hard for me to keep pace with the rest of my cohort. I advise you to lean on your classmates, many of them will be going through similar struggles and the more collective your cohort becomes the easier it will be to reach out and ask for help. I would hop on zoom calls constantly with them and we would discuss solutions to our problems. I would say the way the course is setup for you to learn is decent, some sections are far better than others. Some days we would get live instruction which always was awesome but it was never a consistent thing which I really disliked. It was always at random times & unexpectedly for the most part. And then some days you will spend most of your day watching videos trying to understand the reasoning behind the code and coding along, which can be tough at times! Overall looking back now I will say I'm happy with everything we were presented in regards to our development but expect some frustration and confusion due to different things out of your control. You need to realize early on you will not be a master by any means and many of the things you learn wont stick and that has much more to do with the time constraints then Sabio!

The instructors-

Keep in mind I'm writing this early 2022 so the way the program is run now may or may not be different when you go through. This review is strictly my PERSONAL experience. You can expect there to be at least 3 main instructors that share the workload of the cohort from answering questions on the Q, teaching classes, answering personal questions and holding standup. Stand up will be required daily where you check in with your cohort and instructors and give a review of what you have done the previous day what you expect to get done in the current day and a chance to present any blockers you may be having in regards to anything personal or within your code. At any given time throughout the bootcamp these same few instructors were responsible for multiple cohorts which range from 10-40 students. If you multiply that by the workload expected from them you will understand why I think this area of Sabio needs drastic improvement. Many times I was on calls with different instructors & their attitudes were condescending, their answers would be short and concise not providing me the guidance me and my cohort felt we deserved after paying such a large amount of money! If you are the type of person that likes to voice your frustration expect them to take notes of it and depending on what you said or how it was said it may cause you some problems moving forward. There were kids in my cohort who voiced their frustrations openly on our standup calls or our meetings and every last one of them was removed from the program for one reason or another. I recommend being very careful with what you say, not only for that reason but you may notice a different tone in the voice of certain instructors moving forward in the program. Me and my cohort discussed offline and agreed that everyone was not given the same amount of instruction, which in my opinion was caused by the heavy workload required from the instructors! They just didn't have the patience or desire that was needed to give every student the same amount of counsel which at times was severely needed! Overall they were nice people with very polished skills but there was just too many times throughout the camp where collectively the frustration was boiling over because of the lack of instruction from them! I had to hire a tutor and pay out of pocket to get a better understanding on certain concepts that I wasn't able to grasp with their teachings!

The "Q"

So essentially the Q is where you can expect to find yourself anytime you have a question or need guidance on a certain topic. They have requirements to get on the Q so don't expect to hop on there anytime you need help. The reality of this profession is you need to be a self starter and know how to source information and dissect it so you can help YOURSELF first before reaching out for help. The Q for me again unfortunately similar to the last section was just inefficient at best. They preach the idea from the beginning of the program to the end to "Get on the Q" and "Be efficient with your time" well the problem with the Q was there so many occasions where I would submit a question and it would sit in the list waiting to be picked up by the instructors for on average 30-75 minutes and I'm DEAD serious! In that time I would be attempting to research documentation online and find different ways to solve my questions aswell as reaching out to classmates, but the reality is you just need a certain level of guidance starting out in order for your learning to be structured as possible and the Q never did that for me. For the Q to function best as possible I recommend instead of having the same 3-4 instructors answering questions all day from different campuses all at once they need designated instructors for each campus tasked with giving counsel to select cohorts! If I was having trouble with .net one day and had 5 questions I needed help with, I could end up wasting 3-4 hours waiting on the Q while going down rabbit holes creating more problems within my code. It just wasn't effective and early on I realized that and thus felt the need to source outside instruction to learn as much as possible. They will tell you this is apart of their core learning principals to become self sufficient and all by design but you will realize early on that what they preach with the Q just doesn't live up to its expectations as is!


Final Project

The final project for my cohort was nothing short of AMAZING! Sabio did such a good job of replicating a development atmosphere by forcing us to reach out to each other and come up with ideas collectively. Tasking us with many different objectives that would test our skills. We ended up building a website for a real business with real requirements from an entrepreneur. We met with him collectively and got a great understanding on what he expected and then afterwards what the instructors expected from us. It was the first time we were able to see the big picture and have a chance to connect all the work we had done. From building out API controllers to creating stored procedures in the database to building the frontend with react and working on the visual presentation to the customer. It was honestly such a great experience that gave us the confidence to leave the program feeling like we had completed something meaningful as real world devs! 


My conclusion overall is Sabio was a good experience for me. If I were to go through the program again I would lean more towards one strict area of learning i.e the front end or back end opposed to learning a full stack and becoming a jack of all and a master of none. I learned many things that have propelled me forward into the early stages of my development career. Sabio showed me how to code and for that I have much gratitude. The best thing about Sabio to me is not the stages of learning code but the community they have built. There are so many people working in prominent positions that are willing to help you out just because you're Sabio alum! I will say truly there are a few things they can improve to make the overall experience of the program more enjoyable & orderly. I recommend if you are a new dev like I was to dive into some type of code before you start the program whether that's udemy, leetcode or any other awesome websites that can help you begin understanding the fundamentals of coding. It will boost your experience at Sabio. If you find yourself more passionate about one area of development like React and the frontend or maybe the middle tier act on that feeling! This is all about finding a lane in development and making money in the process. Cheers to an awesome 2022 and to all my future Sabio alum!

Coding saved my life in so many ways and it’s all thanks to Sabio (School of Software Engineering) that I’m able to live a comfortable life financially while advancing my career as a software developer. After going to an information session I quickly realized that Sabio was a “good” coding bootcamp - legitimate in reputation in the tech industry and of course accredited, multiple scholarships, a deferred tuition program (which I feel speaks to their efforts in making the tech space more diverse for BIPOC & Latinx women in tech like myself), prepares you for the real-world by assigning you to a project where you gain job experience, etc. It seemed too good to be true so I did my research! To be honest I wasn’t exactly looking to switch careers, although I did want to gain more technical skills when the pandemic hit, but Sabio spelled it out so clearly and even provided statistics on the current demand for people with programming skills as well as their success rates with alumni. Unlike a lot of other coding bootcamps the CEO & CTO, Liliana & Gregorio, were readily available to answer any of my questions from day 1 (because yes, it is a big commitment when you decide that you are going to learn to code and switch careers!). Even though I didn’t have a background in computer programming the instructors are supportive, patient and demonstrate a deep understanding of computer science in general. I’m so glad I didn’t pass up on this opportunity and I have nothing but a deep sense of gratitude for all of the people who have helped me get to where I am, starting with Sabio! 

Sabio is a fast-track into the tech world. Its more efficient than spending 4 years at a university studying computer science, having to take random classes and prerequisites before you can even begin learning about coding. It's more efficient than learning on your own and spending time going down all the rabbit holes and learning all sorts of random things that may or may not be useful when it comes to landing a job. Sabio tells you exactly what to learn and how long to spend learning it, after which you work on something tangible that you can show to recruiters to demonstrate your skills.

I took the full time program, and it is intense, something you need to be prepared for. The first half of the program is lectures and exercises, with assessments throughout to make sure you really understood what you've been learning. Instructors are almost always available for help with questions you may have. The second half is a real-world project that you will be working on that will rely on everything you've learned thus far. You'll be collaborating and getting hands-on experience with source control, two things you can't really get experience with if you learn coding on your own.

Myself and one other person in my cohort (107), both prior military, landed jobs before we even graduated. 4 months ago I knew little about coding outside of basic HTML and CSS. I'm now working for a big international tech company making $50+/hr. It is possible, it will just take a lot of work, and a little bit of luck.

I got a job as a software developer no more than 2 days after finishing Sabio's coding boot camp. The curriculum has been well prepared for all types of learning, which includes videos, articles, exercises, lecture and one on one instruction. Weekdays you have access to instructors who are excellent at there craft from 9a-5p to help you through road blocks and understand the material better. At the end of the course you work on a startup companies web application that you can put on your resume as real world experience.  Sabio does a great job of ramping you up from knowing next to nothing about software development to being ready to hit the job market. I have friends who have gone to Sabio and friends who have attended other similar boot camps and the value you get at Sabio is unmatched. From the help you get during the course and the quality of you learning, to when you are being prepared for interviews and the job market, to after you graduate and the additional services they offer past graduation choosing Sabio is and was an easy choice.

Attend an info session, reach out to the school, read their reviews. I highly recommend this school!