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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.
A quick reminder: Hack Reactor was created in late 2012 by DevBootcamp grads.
In this article I’ll review the curriculum of the bootcamp and the reality graduates are facing.
The curriculum.~45 per class 90 per floor. 180 at any given time. The “Elite” program generates a cool $3.56M every 3 month.
The first week is here to set your expectations, they have hours of lectures specifically on what to expect for the next ...
A quick reminder: Hack Reactor was created in late 2012 by DevBootcamp grads.
In this article I’ll review the curriculum of the bootcamp and the reality graduates are facing.
The curriculum.~45 per class 90 per floor. 180 at any given time. The “Elite” program generates a cool $3.56M every 3 month.
The first week is here to set your expectations, they have hours of lectures specifically on what to expect for the next 11 weeks. They offer you to drop out within the first week with a refund, minus the $2K+ deposit you paid. Ironically the number of lectures drops dramatically after the first week. After which lectures are every other day, 1 hour long each, for the first 6weeks. The second 6 weeks you’re basically learning on your own.
The material is divided in “sprints”, you have to understand and remember the topic in 2 days, hacking through it, while paired with another student. After a 2 day sprint you see a rushed video you’re supposed to learn from, if you need help during the sprints you get in queue to get help from a recent graduate who himself barely knows the material to help you.
To resume: You’re getting an hour long lecture, after which you have two days to work on the new topic, after which you get a 1h long video of the instructor explaining how he would have solved the assignment. (apparently that’s worth 20K)
The students assigned to help during the sprints have graduated just before you started. They offer certain students to work part time as instructional help for 3 month after they graduated. Unfortunately they are not experts. They do not know best practices that comes with real work experience, that they don’t have.
Mind you, the first 6 weeks (instructional weeks) you have to use 4 years old mac mini, plugged in to a shamefully slow internet. With wireless peripherals that keep breaking all the while you’re trying to hack your way through the curriculum. You would expect more for the price you’re paying.
The third month you’ll work on your thesis project with a team chosen for you. You’ll receive endless lectures on how to find a job and how to present yourself. They have squeezed the actual technical teaching time to the first 6 weeks. The second half is cruise control.
The reality.Learning one language isn’t enough. There are too many bootcamp grads nowadays, people want you to know more than one paradigm. Hack Reactor only teaches javascript. And a lot of veteran programmers, however wrong they might be, regard it as a lesser language. For an “Elite program” I would have expected to learn at least one additional language, maybe a back end one such as Python or Java. It would make grads much more competitive in the job search.
The reason you don’t see bad reviews is the alumni program, they invite you to meet your old classmates in “reunions” about once a year and they promise they’ll help you review your resume at anytime in the future should you decide to go back on the job hunt. But between us grads, we talk about how overpriced the program was. I even had an interview where the interviewer happened to be a hack reactor graduate, he was complaining about the latter.
The idea itself is becoming outdated. They just updated their outcomes data going from 99% of grads find a job in 3 months, to 98% of grads find a job in 6 month that just does not seem reasonable by any standards.
Another observation, most people who get in, are already qualified people, with top university degrees. These very people will now take up to 6 month to find a full stack job with this pseudo degree.
In reality anyone actively looking for a job can find one within 6 month. These statistics are really there to wow you, but after a short analysis, you realize how little is means.
I was lucky to have found a job after a couple month but I know dozens of intelligent graduates who are currently still looking for a job several months after graduation. Having Hack Reactor on their resume might actually repel potential employers, not because of the name but simply because it’s a bootcamp. Most employers don’t know the difference between bootcamps.
They have just increased the tuition by $2,000 it now is $19,780. Why increase tuition knowing the cost hasn’t changed but your outcomes stats have worsened ? I’m guessing they want to cash in as much as they can while they can.I felt the need to write this for potential students who are interested in the program. I wish, that myself, read something like this before signing up. You should know what you’re getting into. In my opinion, it’s not worth the price. Study the material yourself (see the medium article by Andrew Charlebois) or join a cheaper bootcamp. You’ll learn the same and you’ll be $20K richer.
I have included the current curriculum (publicly available at the time of publishing) to give you an idea of what the program teaches.
Technical learning part of the program ~6 weeksIf you want to make a successful bootcamp just follow the recipe: 1. Go to a bootcamp yourself to learn the tricks 2. Hire smart people to help you with student’s moral support, and designing a curriculum 3. Use guerilla marketing and tech blogs to raise attention 4. Only let in people who could already get a job without coming to the bootcamp 5. Publish numbers like 99% get a job or 3% acceptance rate by manipulating the fine print.
TL,DR.Hack Reactor is not the best learning program out there, they’re trying to save a concept that was working 2 years ago and that is no more. Their promises aren’t as appealing as they used to be, and it’s definitely not worth the $19,780 that they are asking.
If you have any questions about my experience or would like to know more, feel free to message me. I encourage all recent Hack Reactor graduates to write about their own experiences to raise awareness about the program.
Nori Maki Arare
★
These are opinions from more than 1 student from more than 1 cohort (both onsite and Remote). Instead of writing several negative reviews and skewing the average number of stars, we have decided to combine and collect all of our opinions into 1 review. Individually speaking, we do not all agree on all contents in this review. In fact, one of us wanted to give this review 5 stars for "Overall Experience." We encourage you to come back to this review to che...
★
These are opinions from more than 1 student from more than 1 cohort (both onsite and Remote). Instead of writing several negative reviews and skewing the average number of stars, we have decided to combine and collect all of our opinions into 1 review. Individually speaking, we do not all agree on all contents in this review. In fact, one of us wanted to give this review 5 stars for "Overall Experience." We encourage you to come back to this review to check for updates. Writing this may even hurt us because we may damage our future job prospects. Some of our classmates are still unemployed even after 6 months of job searching.
Do not believe most positive reviews about Hack Reactor that you read on the Internet (Yelp, Quora, Course Report, Switch Up, etc.) from mid-2016 Hack Reactor graduates. Several positive reviews written by 2016 Hack Reactor graduates are fake. What we mean by this is that the positive reviews are not fake because staff members created fake accounts to boost their ratings, but rather, what makes these reviews fake is that in order to get a free Hack Reactor hoodier at the end, you must write a review (positive, negative, or neutral) with your name attached to it (attached to the Google survey [so the job coach can know who to send it to and not have students cheat Hack Reactor with duplicate reviews for duplicate free hoodies] not directly on the review itself) and show it to your job coach. As you can imagine, even though the job coach does not directly "bribe" you with a free Hack Reactor hoodie (by directly claiming that the review must be positive), most people would not want to write a negative review with their name attached to it (on the Google survey not on the review itself) due to fear of retaliation from the Hack Reactor Outcomes Team (not receiving optimal job support such as whiteboarding help, interviewing help, fixing resume, etc.).
We like how Hack Reactor claimed:
"Please write a review (positive, negative or a mixture of both) on the site listed below" implying that they would be okay with honest negative reviews detracting future applicants to their software engineering bootcamp when in fact, Hack Reactor is a first-and-formost a for-profit school. In Economics 101, a business stays in business to make money. A business that fails to optimize profit is not a business. Do not let the fact that Hack Reactor is giving out several full-rides (by creating a video that teaches someone a new skill) fool you into thinking that their top priority is not to optimize profit. This is all public relations strategies to market their software engineering bootcamp.
As far as we know, Hack Reactor did not ask for reviews in exchange for free Hack Reactor hoodies until recently in mid-2016 or so, so ignore any Hack Reactor alumni who graduated 2012-2015 and or early 2016 who claim that our allegations are false.
Here is our evidence that Hack Reactor engages in such behavior:
http://imgur.com/a/qfcfO
As these people did not graduate from Hack Reactor in mid-2016 specifically, they were not asked to write a review with their names attached in exchange for a free Hack Reactor hoodie. Hack Reactor graduates from 2012-2015 and early 2016 are completely out of touch with reality of the new mid-2016 Hack Reactor quality. They had several $100k+ salary job offers within 3 months of graduating, so they are living in their own echo chamber while mid-2016 graduates and onwards are struggling with dismal job prospects. As such, to the eyes of prospective Hack Reactor applicants, their reviews and opinions are no longer applicable. However, some mid-2016 Hack Reactor graduates are definitely not getting $100k+ job offers within 3 months of graduation.
This is incredibly unreasonable as most prospective Hack Reactor applicants depend on honest reviews to help them make an informed life-changing decision that could negatively affect their mental health, finances, relationships, etc. These students do not realize that Hack Reactor is an unsafe bet until they become unemployed for 6 months.
In fact, some of us were discussing amonst each other to plan to initially give Hack Reactor positive reviews with all 5 stars, wait a month for the free Hack Reactor hoodie to ship to our houses, go back and decrease all of the 5 stars positive reviews back down to 1 star negative reviews. Course Report allows the reviewer to infinitely edit the written review and change the number of stars as well.
Notice how all of the positive reviews on Course Report have 0-1 points of "This review is helpful" whereas most of the negative reviews on Course Report have 20+ points of "This review is helpful." This analysis should tell the Hack Reactor applicant that more people agree with the negative reviews than the positive reviews. Quality over quantitiy. The high number of positive 5-star reviews (which are mostly fake anyways because Hack Reactor alumni are easily bribed with a free Hack Reactor sweater) do not mean much if few people upvote them (agree with them).
The only reason we attended Hack Reactor Remote / Hack Reactor Onsite was due to the postive reviews we have read on Quora, Course Report, Switch, Yelp, etc. (which we later found out some recent ones to be fake because the students were being bribed with free Hack Reactor hoodies).
Coming into Hack Reactor, we had high expectations as Hack Reactor claimed to be "the CS degree for the 21st century" as well as "The Harvard of the Software Engineering Bootcamps." They advertised that their student outcomes were better than other software engineering bootcamps, BS CS programs from UCs, BS CS programs from CSUs, etc.
The Remote Prep and Fulcrum are also useless with minimal help from HIRs with just slides.
Once you pass the technical interview, you must complete the precourse homework by yourself with no help from HIRs.
The HIRs, technical mentors, class sheperd, etc. do not have any previous industrial software engineering experience. The HIRs get paid $22 per hour, so most of us did not even apply. The technical mentors get paid $80k-$100k (as advertised on Angel List). The HIRs from Thinkful have previous industrial software engineering experience and get paid $35 per hour based on what my friends tell me. During sprints, you are forbidden from asking technical mentors for help. You are only allowed to ask HIRs for help.
We asked help from the HIRs, and most HIRs just told us the following:
"You must Google the answer yourself. I will watch you via screenshare to see your Googling methodology. If there are any errors in your Googling methodology, we will correct you and point you in the correct path in terms of knowing what correct terms to Google."
"Did you try Googling it before submitting the Help Desk Ticket"?
"My goal is not to give you direct answers, but rather, my goal is to point you in the correct direction and help you get unstuck. Once you get unstuck, you Google the rest."
"Here is some documentation, blogs, videos, etc. for you to read. These resources will solve your questions. If you still need help, use Google. If you still need help, submit another help desk ticket."
"These concepts were covered in the videos. Rewatch videos X, Y, Z on the MakerPass interface. You should also Google some blogs to help you. You can use money to buy Udemy videos as well."
Outdated Curriculum
MongoDB 3.2.11 was released on November 18, 2016.
Current Hack Reactor students definitely did not learn MongoDB 3.2.11.
https://docs.mongodb.com/v3.2/release-notes/3.2/
Express 5.0 is in the alpha stage, yet one recent Hack Reactor graduate whom we met at a software company recruiting meet and greet event in downtown SF claim that he or she was still solving the half of the Express sprints in Express 3.0 and the second half of the Express sprints in Express 4.0. This shows that Hack Reactor was too lazy to update their curriculum to be consistent.
Google released Angular 2.1.0 on October 12, 2016. https://angular.io/news.html We are still learning Angular 1.0.
Node 7.2.0 was released on November 22, 2016. https://nodejs.org/en/download/releases/ A recent Hack Reactor graduate said that he or she was still learning Node 6.
Facebook just released React 15.4.0 on November 16, 2016.
https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/04/07/react-v15.html
The version of React.js that one recent Hack Reactor graduate was learning was definitely not 15.4.0.
What are we even paying $17,780 for then?
After realizing how insulting the HIRs were, by around Week 4, 95%+ of us stopped submitting tickets for help desk to ask HIRs for help, and we just simply started to search the Internet when we got stuck.
Many of Hack Reactor's contents look similar to online free sources. This could also be due to other sources reusing Hack Reactor's contents (which is clearly not Hack Reactor's fault at all). It can also be previous Hack Reactor students uploading Hack Reactor sprints onto their public respositories on GitHub and other sources copying off of them (which is clearly not Hack Reactor's fault at all). Our HIRs told us to consult Udemy, Youtube, etc. before doing each sprint. So we did. When we were doing the sprints, we were saying to ourselves, "Wait, did we not do something similar to this before?" The HIRs did not tell us why there were no solution videos for Recastly nor Siskel. While we do not accuse Hack Reactor of plagiarism or copyright infringement under DMCA laws, it begs the question of:
"Why pay $17,780 to study at Hack Reactor when so many resources are available online for free"?
Someone can just clone the Hack Reactor experience by gathering a group of 4 Hack Reactor accepted students, use Udemy, Internet, Free Code Camp, etc., and just build projects as a group. The real value in Hack Reactor are the portfolios and the alumni connections which can be replicated via Meetup groups.
We give Hack Reactor the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was possible that another Youtube video was recycling material from Hack Reactor instead or that neither were reusing contents from each other and they both independently created the similar content. It is incredibly difficult to create super 100% original content from scratch. Mr. Harsh Patel claimed that all sprints are designed independently, so we believe him. We are glad that Hack Reactor is committed to honesty and that Mr. Harsh Patel responded. We wish Hack Reactor and Mr. Harsh Patel the best in optimizing Hack Reactor for future students. However, Mr. Harsh Patel still failed to explain to us why Recastly and Siskel do not have prepared solution videos. These solutions lectures had to be given live in person.
How much you learn depends on how smart your sprint partners / project partners. Despite claiming a 3% acceptance rate, Hack Reactor still accepts low-quality students. It is incredibly easy to cheat on the technical admissions interview, precourse homework, weekly assessments, sprints, summary assessment, etc. In fact, it may even be possible to cheat your way through the entire Hack Reactor curriculum (onsite or Remote) if someone is clever enough (although we do not believe there has been a case where someone has cheated their way through the entire Hack Reactor curriculum). The reason why people cheat in Hack Reactor is because they quit their job and spent $17,780 and do not want to put their spent money to waste.
On Week 6 Saturday, you must pass a Summary Assessment. If you fail miserably, you are permanently kicked out of Hack Reactor where you have no option to defer to a subsequent Hack Reactor cohort cycle. You are still given a prorated refund of around $8k though. The Summary Assessment covers the MEARN stack.
The thesis project phase is useless because everyone builds their projects differently using their own technology stacks, so there is no way for the HIRs to help you get unstuck as each HIR is specialized in a different technology stack and each HIR does not know your game plan for your thesis project as they were not there when you are theorycrafting your thesis project at the beginning. If you are stuck on a part of the thesis project, you basically have no recourse whatsoever. Most groups do not even finish their thesis project by Saturday of Week 13 and they must spend several months after their Hack Reactor cohort has ended to wrap up their projects before interviewing. This means that some people's (the 2% in 2015 that are unable to obtain at least 1 software engineering job within 6 months of graduation from Hack Reactor) timelines are as follows:
-1 month to study JS on your own for the technical admissions interview
-1 month to re-interview if you get soft rejected
-1 month for precourse homework
-2 months to defer to the next cohort if you fail the technical check-in during the precourse phase
-3 months for the actual software engineering immersive
-1 month to finish / fix / polish your projects (MVP, Greenfield, Legacy, Thesis) on your own even after Hack Reactor is finished because your team members could be incompetent, code everything wrong, let you do most of the work, etc. (If you do not have a BS CS degree [which most Hack Reactor students do not], remember that you must have an interview-viable project before an employer will even give you a phone screen.) without any help from Hack Reactor
-2 months to review data structures and algorithms via Cracking the Coding Interview, Interview Cake, Coderbyte, Code Wars, Leet Code, Top Coder, etc. due to how poorly data structures and algorithms are taught at Hack Reactor without any help from Hack Reactor
-1 month to review JavaScript technology stacks (MEAN + Backbone.js + React.js) via Free Code Camp, Udemy, etc. without any help from Hack Reactor
-6 months to find a job (applying, getting rejected, phone screens, take home coding challenges, Skype interviews, onsite interviews, negotiation, etc.).
We are aware that 98% of 2015 Hack Reactor graduates receive an offer within 6 months of graduation from Hack Reactor (as a 3rd party independent accounting firm verified), but if you are in the 2% from 2015 that were unable to get a software engineering job within 6 months, your entire career change to software engineering via Hack Reactor might take upwards of 17 months. Being unemployed for 17 or more months will negatively affect your relationships, finances, etc. because the interest on the loans will accumulate while you are unemployed. Some long-term unemployed Hack Reactor graduates who have completely given up on their software engineering career change have gone back to their previous jobs.
The job coaches are more like cheerleaders. They do not help you connect with jobs.
When people read the phrase "job placement," people usually interpret it as "the organization connecting the students with interviews directly where the students skip the application submission process and jump straight to the interview."
As Hack Reactor does not connect its students with interviews directly where the students skip the application submission process and jump straight to the interview, their outcomes team's goal is incredibly misleading.
Hack Reactor has cancelled their hiring day where they brought in hiring partners to observe the students' projects and hire on the spot. Nowadays, Hack Reactor alumni just apply randomly and hope to get jobs. Codesmith in LA and App Academy in SF still have their hiring days.
App Academy and Viking School are safer bets as you only pay them X% of your 1st year's salary over a span of Y months if they help you get a job.
Thinkful, Career Foundry, Udacity Nanodegree+ refunds your tuition if you fail to find a job after 6 months.
Hack Reactor keeps the entire $17,780 tuition even if you are unemployed for more than 6 months.
Hack Reactor shuts down curriculum access after 3 months. Thinkful lets you keep infinite access to the Thinkful curriculum for a lifetime even if Thinkful refunds the student the entire $14,000 due to failing to find at least 1 market-rate software engineering job in his or her location. Some Thinkful students even feel bad that Thinkful is being this generous. A Thinkful alumnus claimed that this is Thinkful's method of giving a gift as gratitude for at least trying out Thinkful. To make this review honest and fair, since we claimed that Hack Reactor uses free scholarships via creating "Teach a new skill" videos to market their school, this may also be used to market Thinkful.
The Hack Reactor curriculum is incredibly outdated. Hack Reactor claims to be better than other software engineering bootcamps because other software engineering bootcamps takes you from 0 - 100 whereas Hack Reactor takes you from 20 - 120. However, the current job market for junior / mid software engineers is oversaturated. Most of the software engineering job market is geared towards senior and above (lead, staff, director, VP, CTO, etc.). However, being at 120 is not enough to get a senior software engineering role. To be a senior software engineer, you need to be at least at 150-180. Some Hack Reactor alumni have submitted 500+ applications, but they are still unemployed (assuming their claims are true). To make this review fair, this could also mean that they are bad interviewers which is clearly not Hack Reactor's fault.
Some employers in 2016 and onwards want to see a completely self-made project with only the job applicant making 100% of the commits on said project on GitHub, but Hack Reactor forces students to build projects in groups of 3-5. Previous Hack Reactor job seekers have told my classmates that employers generally do not give interviews to those who do not have at least 1 full-stack application that is completely built by themselves because the employers do not want to risk wasting time interviewing an applicant who could be incompetent who might have let his or her teammates do all of the work and take all the credit in the end (remember that in the thesis project phase, the HIRs / technical mentors do not check individual progress of each member on each thesis team before letting them graduate). This means that it is entirely possible to graduate from Hack Reactor by barely making any commits at all to your group's thesis project.
Our main reasoning for writing this review is to help others make an informed decision, so that they do not quit their job and take out $42k in loans ($25k from Pave + $17k from Earnest) (remember that you also need living expenses for 9 months [3 months for Hack Reactor and 6 months for job search]). In order to have our negative review be taken seriously by as many people as possible, we have carefully edited this negative review to remove all sentences related emotions and only focus on the cold hard logic.
We would not recommend Hack Reactor (onsite or Remote) to anyone at all even if he or she won the full-ride Hack Reactor scholarship $17,780 where you must make a Youtube video of yourself teaching someone a new skill because this person who attends Hack Reactor with a full-ride would still be wasting his or her time.
We hope the Hack Reactor employees had an excellent Thanksgiving and Christmas Holiday season because they surely ruined ours.
Some alternatives to Hack Reactor would be Udemy, Youtube, blogs, Stack Overflow, Free Code Camp, Free Code Camp meetups where you have access to a live tutor volunteer, Interview Cake, Cracking the Coding Interview, etc. The secret is knowing what to study. The only reason why people attend software engineering bootcamps is that they find self-studying to be difficult due to not having a game plan curriculum. Once you figure out exactly what you must study in order to be a successful software engineer, attending any software engineering bootcamp makes absolutely zero sense.
The founders of Telegraph Academy have both left Telegraph Academy, and Telegraph Academy has now been converted to The Telegraph Track which is a mentorship program for people of color, women, LGBTQ people, etc. in the software industry. One Telegraph Academy cofounder is now a diversity specialist at Hack Reactor, and the other Telegraph Academy cofounde is now the interim director of Hack Reactor Remote. Notice how there is no Hack Reactor site in Berkeley, CA. The reason why the Telegraph Academy was not converted to Hack Reactor Berkeley is because they received some negative reviews on Yelp and Course Report. The Reactor Core Network just decided to let the Telegraph Academy name die out to protect the Hack Reactor brand name.
As of 11-29-16, after only 4 days, this honest negative review received 30 upvotes. It is possible to upvote the same review on Course Report more than once after clearing cookies, but even if we took into account that each person upvoted this honest negative review 3 times each, that is still ~10 unique upvotes. We did upvote some of the previous negative reviews (only once each), but we have only upvoted our own negative review once (after writing the 1st draft) since it is more than 1 person writng this review. We are extremely pleased to know that this review has made an impact on some prospective students' decisions. It is only a matter of time until Hack Reactor is forced to create a directory of students' LinkedIn profiles where they encourage prospective applicants to message random alumni for opinions and or take the "you only pay us X% of your 1st year's salary until you find a job within Y months" approach towards tuition.
We are so glad that Course Report only has an upvote button and no downvote button.
Can you imagine what would happen if Course Report had a downvote button?
If Course Report had a downvote button, lots of Hack Reactor alumni who had a positive experience to comb through past negative reviews and downvote them.
One thing to note is that the next cycle ends around Saturday 12-10-16, and this exact time is when the fake reviews from Hack Reactor graduates (who are easily bribed with a free Hack Reactor hoodie and who have sold their soul to the devil by knowingly deceiving future Hack Reactor applicants by writing fake positive reviews just to get a free Hack Reactor hoodie) start pouring in.
We will probably write our final draft before Saturday 12-10-16, so that this honest negative review can be seen by many prospective applicants before a sea of fake positive reviews (by Hack Reactor alumni who are easily bribed by a free Hack Reactor hoodie) eclipses this honest negative review.
Make sure you share this honest negative review with as many people as you know.
If we can even convince at least one person reading this honest negative review to reject Hack Reactor to self-study software engineering via Udemy or Free Code Camp, our job here is done.
To make this honest review fair, we will still list some positive factors about Hack Reactor:
-The classmates are nice and social.
-You will probably be friends with your project partners for life.
-The program is somewhat selective to a certain extent, so the top classmates are all very smart.
-The atmosphere is positive.
-The top students get jobs at top companies.
-Almost all classmates are willing to help each other.
-You have guaranteed partners for software engineering projects.
-Hack Reactor hired an independent accounting firm to verify their student outcomes (in 2015, 98% of job-seekers found a software engineering job within 6 months of graduation from Hack Reactor).
Our advice:
If you want a completely objective view point of Hack Reactor, we strongly encourage you to go on LinkedIn and message 10+ people from Hack Reactor mid-2016 and ask them for their opinions on Hack Reactor. All of them will say that they were offered a Hack Reactor sweater in exchange for an Internet review with their name attached to it. Most people fear giving opinions with paper trail as these can be traced back to them. Offer to buy them lunch / beer / lunch / a gift card in exchange for taking the time to sit down with them for X minutes asking them for their real honest opinions of Hack Reactor in person where there is no paper trail of their opinions leading back to them.
To the people claiming that this is a fake review from a competitor software engineering bootcamp designed to attract prospective applicants to their own software engineering bootcamp, if we are not Hack Reactor alumni, then how do we know super specific details about the Hack Reactor syllabus (which are not publically available anywhere on the Internet at the time of this review) such as Siskel (Backbone.js sprint) and Recastly (React.js sprint with Youtube API) not having prepared recorded posted solution videos on the Hack Reactor contents interface (at the time of this posting)? Explain that. Feel free to ask any current Hack Reactor student to verify this specific fact (at the time of this posting). Actually, ask any other future Hack Reactor students in subsequent cohorts to verify this fact because given Hack Reactor's previous track record of failing to update their online videos in a timely manner, Hack Reactor will most likely still be using 2014 video lectures in 2017 and still fail to update a single aspect on their outdated MakerPass interface. It is incredibly unfortunate that we even had to provide some sort of circumstantial evidence to convince future Hack Reactor prospective applicants that this is a real review. It looks to us like none of the positive reviewers had any logical rebuttal to our review and just resorts to calling all negative reviews fake because they have nothing else to back up their claims. Several of the rebuttals to this review had to resort to italicizing and or bolding their main arguments. With the exception of subtopic headlines, we never had to resort to bolding or italicizing any text within this review. We let the evidence, rationale, logic, etc. speak for itself.
Assuming Hack Reactor brings back hiring day, we will increase the job support category of this review to 3 stars.
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
Being that Hack Reactor's content on this site is "sponsored," I wouldn't doubt that the majority of these posts aren't real.
I was shuffled around by admissions, which ultimately led to an unfavorable outcome. I applied in December, and did not pass the technical interview. After this, I was advised to join their $3,000 Fulcrum program, which I later found out is the free pre-course work after you get admitted.
Subsequently, in early January I was offered a free seat w...
Being that Hack Reactor's content on this site is "sponsored," I wouldn't doubt that the majority of these posts aren't real.
I was shuffled around by admissions, which ultimately led to an unfavorable outcome. I applied in December, and did not pass the technical interview. After this, I was advised to join their $3,000 Fulcrum program, which I later found out is the free pre-course work after you get admitted.
Subsequently, in early January I was offered a free seat with their PTC program, which is hour long sessions with an instructor directly geared toward admission. Gratefully, I signed up.
About 15 minutes into my first meeting, I revealed that I was enrolled in Fulcrum, and was told I couldn't do both. (I'm still baffled as to why.) Having been in Fulcrum more than a week, I was no longer entitled to a refund, so I had to stick with it.
Fulcrum's cirruculum is nothing but slides. No classes, or tutorials. Slides, slides, slides. Thousands of them. Seeing how this is geared toward accepted applicants, it proved to be a poor fit for me. I worked through all of their remedial material covering basic object oriented programming, git, and the command line.
Then you have something called Underbar. All this is, is writing out the most popluar functions from the Underscore.js library. No application or use, just writing them out. Around then I applied a second time, which I admittedly did poorly. I was advised, again, to attend Fulcrum.
Instead, I decided to work only towards admission which is, literally, "reciting" part of the Underscore.js libray including Each, Map, Filter/Reject, and Reduce. I worked hard to remember these.
About a week ago I took my third try at admission. I did well, seeing how at this point I knew exactly what was discussed in the interview. I got to, what I was told was, the last question. They threw me a whammy, to define Every, and though I was close, I did not get it right.
A few days later admissions wrote that I was being given a conditional acceptance, and advised to sign up for PTC............. yet, I was stripped of the opportunity I needed to attend PTC in the first place. It's most likely, that had I been allowed to complete the sessions, I would have been accepted my second time. Instead I got shuffled around for ~4 months in the post-acceptance pre-course work. I'm basically right back where I started.
It doesn't make any sense to me why a non-accepted student would be advised to pay $3,000 to try their hand at the post-acceptance pre-course work. I inquired to admissions why I was sent on such a long and expensive detour, to which they replied that they were recinding my conditional acceptance.
My overall experience was poor, especially after finding out the reason that their job placement is so high (99%) is because if you can't find a job, you work there as a teacher for 3 months. Then you're back on your own. I wouldn't recommend this school to anyone as there are far less expensive options that aren't accepting students based on their ability to memorize and write out the Underscore.js libary.
Hello, Shawn here.
I will phrase my review in two parts:
1.
I work in financial securities, and I rigourously research all of these bootcamp schools in the same manner that my employer pays me to research stocks.
My analysis is that Hack Reactor is an over priced work of fiction that has a great SEO campaign and Google Adwords account that places them at the top whenever you type in "top coding bootcamps" into Google.
They ...
Hello, Shawn here.
I will phrase my review in two parts:
1.
I work in financial securities, and I rigourously research all of these bootcamp schools in the same manner that my employer pays me to research stocks.
My analysis is that Hack Reactor is an over priced work of fiction that has a great SEO campaign and Google Adwords account that places them at the top whenever you type in "top coding bootcamps" into Google.
They charge you almost 20k for materials that are available 100% free online.
They have so called "Instructors" that are really just former students who were not smart enough to get a job...and the Founders are people with absolutely no verifiable professional working experience - NONE.
If this was a stock I would short it.
2.
Has anyone else noticed the large amount of 5 star reviews?
Is it just my imagination or is the Hack Reactor marketing team trying to flood this blog with fake reviews?
There are 65 total reviews so far, and every negative review has immediately been swamped by "5 star reviews"...but they dont give their names.
No details are provided in these 5 star reviews...no instructor names, no course reviews, not even any reports on trying to find a job.
Thanks for proving everything I mentioned in this article, Hack Reactor marketing team :)
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
Ill make this short and sweet. I completed 6.5 weeks at the MakerPrep course in LA.
This school is a complete scam. They have many 5 star ratings but that is only because they have reviewed themselves many many many times. They are all fake reviews to give the appearance of quality. The instructors are previous graduates who cant make it in the real world. They are lazy and are just there punching a clock. Everyone was led to believe that they would have support for when they nee...
Ill make this short and sweet. I completed 6.5 weeks at the MakerPrep course in LA.
This school is a complete scam. They have many 5 star ratings but that is only because they have reviewed themselves many many many times. They are all fake reviews to give the appearance of quality. The instructors are previous graduates who cant make it in the real world. They are lazy and are just there punching a clock. Everyone was led to believe that they would have support for when they needed it through resources online and 1 on 1.
I was there EARLY every day to have just minutes of time with the instructor, (i was early about 3-4 hours early EVERY DAY! ) They asked us to Slack them with any questions and they would get back to us. That never happened! My entire experiance was spent trying to get the instructors attention. There were way too many students all fighting over the instructors time. He never had a clear lesson plan, and was always late to class. It was almost as if they had no idea that we were paying good money for this. They changed the material all the time and everyone there was completely lost. Ive never heard so many complaints before. I would try to set up appointments and use their spreedsheet to book office hours they they never showed up to.How convienat for sappovive "expert programmers" to not be able to figure out how to fix a simple shared excel spredsheet. Absolutley rediculous.
They admitted that the class didnt go as they had hoped and that I would be able to attend the class over again so that I could get my moneys worth. THAT NEVER HAPPENED! IM SO PISSED! Do they even know what it take to scrape together the money it takes to take this course when you are UNEMPLOYED!!!
In this age of refined open source and cost effective online materials you dont need Hack Reactor to teach you how to code.
Thats actually not true coz Hack Reactor only takes people who already know how to code ie JavaScript. If you are not at this stage, please learn JavaScript and comeback looking at HR or go to a bootcamp that starts from scratch. And you will not be at much disadvantage from someone from HR as in both places after some coding you will be learning everything ...
In this age of refined open source and cost effective online materials you dont need Hack Reactor to teach you how to code.
Thats actually not true coz Hack Reactor only takes people who already know how to code ie JavaScript. If you are not at this stage, please learn JavaScript and comeback looking at HR or go to a bootcamp that starts from scratch. And you will not be at much disadvantage from someone from HR as in both places after some coding you will be learning everything on your own. HR will expect you to already know a lot of the stuff or learn it while you go through the curriculum (dont kid yourself, in two day sprints you cannot learn all the new stuff and the old stuff). Generally bootcamps are overpriced and unnecessary.
If you know JavaScript and want to make apps on your preferred platform then pick up a project, think about how you will implement it, search google and find out libraries or frameworks, two most popular ones are Angular or React. Pick React (just a suggestion) because that is how you should be learning to code modules (called components) which you can reuse. Angular is easier to learn but does not push you to learn the best practices coz it deals with a lot of important jargon. (very important to google best practices on each step to become a professional)
Anyways the best way to learn is by using it in a project. Like you will best learn how to cook is by making your favorite dish and in the process you will google recipes, ingredients, best practice and then you will start putting them in place to make your super uber dish. First time it will not be great but will give you a base to improve upon until you get it right.
Apply the principles above to learning to code and make a portfolio of projects (not just tutorials but something actually most you have done yourself)
If you are at the starting stage then start learning and getting good at JavaScript or which ever lang you like. Those scary little aliens on the screen will start becoming more and more familiar as you start putting your learning in practice. Once you are good with JS, learn a little HTML and start manipulating the DOM which is just your web screen. Then look into React or Angular, dont even need to go through JQuery which is becoming like a dinosaur in the museum but good to have an overview like brousing through the museum.
It will greatly enhance your experience if you find a friend or meetup to code along.
Boom, a couple of months of incremental progress leads to a solid skill you can take to your new job.
Hack Reactor is just a streamlined path of doing the above, and in no means a right of passage or even the best/right way of becoming a successful engineer. (I chuckle when they say Software Engineer. Even CS degree majors do not qualify as Engineers) but that is what you will want to become I am guessing in going to HR.
If this was 10-12 thousand dollars, it would have been worth it, probabily. 18-20 grand, common. Maybe 4 years ago when the best you could get online was a bunch of scrappy blogs. Someone can sue them for claiming to train Software Engineers, because that implies a lot more than going to a germ infested incubator of jam packed students puffed up with false hope after learning basic stuff about data structures, algorithms, a few libraries and frameworks, half of which are old redundant stuff. In the end even they will tell you not to mention HR in an interview, the real reason I will tell you after coming out on the other end is no one gives a c rp about HR, not because there is a bias which there is but because it is just bs that HR is teaching Software Engineering and any good engineer will hire you based on your skills, NOT coz you went to HR unless they are grads.
Staff are pretty awesome, building sucks, curriculum needs major over hawl not only because of old tech but also because for the first half you are learning mindlessly ie passing tests without knowing what the technology is or how its used. A better way would be that students implement a basic app after the two day sprints indivisibly. Fellow students are possibly the best thing about HR.
Seriously find friends who are doing the same thing and go through one of the online courses like the nano degree at udacity for 150 bucks or so is pretty good place, codeacadmy is a good place to start learning languages, freeBootCamp is a good one. Pick one, finish it. Boom Save 18000 bucks.
As far as the 105 grand salary, most people come to HR from strong CS back ground. Quarter have CS degrees, Quarter have some other engineering or relevant degrees, 10% are Berkley or similar grads. 30+% have significant prior experience from job as a developer and 10% have little background and take significant time to build up skills and get lower income spectrum jobs. Compounding all of this gives 105 grand average which is smart on their hand, only admit people who know how to code and this is what you get.
Good people. I would say that for sure. A lot of good iterative stuff going on. 10-12 thousand is a worth it experience.
Let’s begin by getting the dirty details out of the way to relieve some curiosity. I’m going to attempt to give those who are looking for an honest and insightful review a full understanding of my perspective, so they can possibly make an informed decision about their future. I’d first like to present some facts about me, since it seems to be relevant for the sake of context when reviewing the opinions, perspective, and respective nature of those providing reviews provided here or an...
Let’s begin by getting the dirty details out of the way to relieve some curiosity. I’m going to attempt to give those who are looking for an honest and insightful review a full understanding of my perspective, so they can possibly make an informed decision about their future. I’d first like to present some facts about me, since it seems to be relevant for the sake of context when reviewing the opinions, perspective, and respective nature of those providing reviews provided here or anywhere for that matter. My name is Richard Boothe, I attended Hack Reactor in Austin during the cohort of 2016 that went from February to May. During my time as a student I decided that I’d like to be a Technical Fellow/Hacker in Residence, and thus went on to do so at the New York campus from June to September of the same year. After my time at Hack Reactor it took me 5 weeks to find a job in web development, my salary is above the average of Hack Reactor graduates.
As of the writing of this review, I am working for both Ksquare Solutions Inc. and also the Boy Scouts of America in Irving,TX as a Senior UI Developer/Software Engineering Contractor respectively. I am 33 years old and before attending Hack Reactor was a bartender/bar manager for 10 years. Hopefully that’s enough info for you to find me on LinkedIn if you’d like to ask questions or just want to absolutely know I’m not a fake person like a majority of the anonymous one-star reviews seem to suggest.
My experience in regard to software and web development prior to Hack Reactor was limited entirely to Team Treehouse, Code Academy and Coderbyte. I had discovered that I really enjoyed the algorithmic nature of solving problems and was tired of my career behind the bar, so I began researching bootcamps and university options two years prior to my time as a student. The majority of programs at that time were advertising a 0-60 acceleration in learning, meaning having an absolutely zero amount of knowledge in the field of web development to knowing enough to get a junior level job. Meanwhile Hack Reactor advertised an education that would accelerate future web developers with a 20-120 acceleration, leaving their graduates at a mid to senior level upon entering job search. Furthermore, at the time none of these programs offered outcomes assistance besides Hack Reactor, which was a selling point for me for the obvious reason of avoiding retreating back to the bar scene after investing the admitted high cost of a bootcamp like program. I decided completely against the idea of investing in a University program upon realizing it would cost me a minimum of $80,000.
I decided on Hack Reactor for a seven reasons.
As a prospective student, an actual student, and later a Hacker In Residence, I never felt that any of those reasons were abandoned or less than what was originally presented.
Hack Reactor is *NOT* a bootcamp for students looking for an easy ride into a six-figure job, it never has been. Furthermore, it is not a program that one can easily jump into without prior experience and exit with a maximum gain. For this reason I warn anyone attempting to game the admissions program that you are doing yourself a huge disservice. If you review some of the poor reviews, you will notice a trend that most of those students providing 1 star reviews had failed the admissions program several times, or had ‘memorized the admissions requirements’ rather than take the time to learn the concepts that are recommended for admittance.
It took me a year to get to a point where I felt confident enough to take the admissions interview, and that was after performing self-study with the concepts of conditional statements, scope, closures and higher-order functions. For those that gamed the system and feel cheated, I feel sympathy for you but also wonder what you expected when time and again the expectations presented before admittance and during the cohort were that you needed to have a fundamental understanding to succeed. The reason Hack Reactor focuses so heavily on fundamentals to reinforce the understanding that students should already have is to insure that more advanced topics like frameworks, API creation and consumption, data manipulation, and database structures can be taught. FYI, the admissions system has been changed to avoid unknowingly allowing students into the program that are not yet ready. So while learning the concepts of higher order functions such as each/map/filter/reduce is great and will help you be a better developer, memorizing how to type those functions out without knowing the reason for the code will probably be a waste of time.
Without the core concepts of basic javascript, it is unrealistic to assume that the advanced topics can be taught, which is primarily a reason ES5 is focused on prior to teaching ES6. Why teach arrow functions, spread operators, destructuring, classes, constructors, map, set, block scoping etc… if you don’t have a proficient understanding of functions, arrays, basic iteration (for, for-in, for-of, while loops), scope, objects, the ‘this’ keyword, the paradigms of Object Oriented Programming versus functional programming versus using OLOO tactics, when and how to use coercion etc…? That being said, as of now ES6 is being taught in at least the New York campus under the great direction of instructors Joseph Martin and John Michelin.
My experience as a student was excellent in the fact that it primarily focused on JavaScript, with some time spent learning SQL (not nearly at the level I did with JavaScript but enough to be dangerous). I don’t think that I could have spent the roughly 3 months learning more than one language proficiently as I did during my time at Hack Reactor. In fact, in regard to my job I only use JavaScript. This is due to my use of Node on the Server/backend and React/React Native on the Client/frontend. So I think it’s a little odd to read some reviews by anonymous individuals who attended Hack Reactor that make the claim that they felt regret over learning only one language. Especially since SQL is in the curriculum.
I will admit there were absolute moments of stress and frustration, with my own lack of understanding at times, or the lack of understanding from a Hacker in Residence, or from a partner who was less than helpful. However in hindsight, this was an extremely accurate representation of the employment I currently engage in daily. There are times now at my current employment where I have a problem that needs a solution that is not immediately available or obvious, a colleague who isn’t particularly helpful, or a more senior figure who is less than willing to help find a solution. The environment I experienced as a student provided me with a vast toolkit that was primarily based on problem solving, that just happened to be in the realm of coding in JavaScript. If I were to land a job that focused in a Ruby or Python environment, I would not have any trouble acquiring the knowledge to code in those languages. This is solely due to the fact that I learned how to learn how to code at Hack Reactor. If you can think logically and algorithmically in one language, you can learn the syntax and code in any language. So once again, this is an optimization of time and investment, with all the above mentioned fundamentals that need to be acquired to succeed at Hack Reactor, learning multiple languages and their respective syntax would be a waste of time to you as a student.
My thoughts on the program overall are great obviously, I rated everything five stars across the board for a reason right? The instructor Gilbert answered any and all questions I ever had about the content of the curriculum, and always did so humbly and with patience. My Technical Mentors/Hackers In Residence were always willing to help me reason about toy problems, or help me find break-throughs in my understanding. Of course there is the chance that I got lucky with a great group of folks as mentors and instructors, but given the nature of the Hack Reactor program, and my experiences at two separate campuses, I highly doubt it. Linden, my wonderful and amazing counselor was a godsend at times I felt overwhelmed and disheartened about my self-confidence in regard to my own progress. The support of a student counselor is one that is not mentioned very often in regard to the reviews on Hack Reactor and it should be, this role is crucial to the students having an ear to speak to and a voice to listen to. Shout out to Jeff in NYC for being equally amazing!
During my time as a student I decided I wanted to be a Hacker In Residence as I have always enjoyed teaching, and also wanted to enrich my understanding of more advanced concepts in web development. This decision, which frustratingly, insultingly, and inaccurately has been posted in prior reviews was not due to a lack of ability to acquire gainful employment, but rather a desire to teach and further my understanding in advanced topics related to web development. The Hacker in Residence program is something that students apply for during their time as students, not during their job search or after they "decide they can’t get a job". If you are reading this and decide to attend Hack Reactor, I highly encourage you to apply for this position as it is incredibly rewarding on so many levels, I’ll spare the details as that’s a different topic all together.
Lastly, the community that I still engage with today is one that continues to grow and flourish as I carry on with coding and my career. I am extremely grateful and proud of the accomplishments I have achieved because I am aware of how difficult the task was, and is. And with that I’d like you to keep that in mind when making an investment in Hack Reactor, as with any life changing decision for yourself. Most things worth doing of any magnitude are not simple, or easy, or quick. Don’t try to cheat the experience. If you really want to invest in something, attack the goal with a hundred percent. Please reach out to me if you’d like, and thanks for reading the novel ;)
I will graduate from Hack Reactor this December. I must say it was far far below my expectations. Huge Disclaimer: At the end of the course they ask you to write a review of Hack Reactor, if you want a Hack Reactor Branded sweatshirt. 2nd Disclaimer: I will not comment about Job search or Job Help because my goal of joining Hack Reactor was to launch a startup.
So here is mine:
Firstly, the video lectures from Udemy, Udacity, EggHead, CodeSchool etc are ALL far far supe...
I will graduate from Hack Reactor this December. I must say it was far far below my expectations. Huge Disclaimer: At the end of the course they ask you to write a review of Hack Reactor, if you want a Hack Reactor Branded sweatshirt. 2nd Disclaimer: I will not comment about Job search or Job Help because my goal of joining Hack Reactor was to launch a startup.
So here is mine:
Firstly, the video lectures from Udemy, Udacity, EggHead, CodeSchool etc are ALL far far superior than HR’s in every single way you can think of. Most of Hack Reactor's videos are recorded from 2014 and maybe 5% of them after 2015. I found myself constantly spending additional money on videos from other companies. This is crazy considering I just spent close to 20k on this bootcamp. Their teaching materials are outdated, Why are we learning express 3.0 still when express 5.0 is already close to complete? Why are we learning angular1 when angular2 is released? React 15+ -- Yeah just the basics only, barely. The course is still in ES5, not ES6! (they give you a preview of it for 2 days out of the 3 months) And so on..
Second, there is a huge lack of support. I spent more FaceTime talking to non-technical class managers and counselors than actual teachers. And Yes the Hacker in residents are more a waste of time than helpful. Honestly, I could have just studied this alone, 75% of materials are available free. You just have to know what to search for (really thats the secret sauce). About a third of the way through the class support from non-peers was close to 0%. Yes this is a fact. 100% OF THE HELP I RECIEVED WAS FROM MY CLASSMATES....WHY bother spending so money then for a bootcamp?!? Some HIR's ask me to google things or "I can't tell you that, you need to figure it out yourself"
Third, the instructors are bad. HR teachers are no longer the founders of the company. Its a shame, when we look at precorded video lectures everyone in the cohort is thinking "I wish this co-founder was around to teach us, not our current mentor". One of the technical mentors was so bad, that 75% of the cohort made fun of him when we were just chatting amongst ourselves. He barely answered our questions and gave off the vibe he hated his job.
I would not be doing justice if I didn’t give a couple of PROS, so here they are:
TLDR - I would not recommend Hack Reactor. The competion has caught up really well. If I took this course in 2014 or 2015, probably then it would make sense. But given its almost the end of 2016, take your money and spend it elsewhere. You will thank me. Yes Hack Reactor has a good name, but what good is a name if you are not happy with the outcome? I learned a lot but seriously felt ripped off and cheated, and that I could have joined FreeCodeCamp for free.
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
I was a HRR18 student in the online HackReactor course graduated end of October
For the benefit of the future coders I would like to give my experiences so you can make an informed choice. I will at the same time during the story , give my judegements which I accumulated over the course.
My journey started in early in the year when I decided to become a coder as a change of career as I found it interesting when I experimented with it.
I started with the remot...
I was a HRR18 student in the online HackReactor course graduated end of October
For the benefit of the future coders I would like to give my experiences so you can make an informed choice. I will at the same time during the story , give my judegements which I accumulated over the course.
My journey started in early in the year when I decided to become a coder as a change of career as I found it interesting when I experimented with it.
I started with the remote prep, cost around 700 dollars but worth it as it gives you a direction.
Next step is passing the admissions challenge, what I found at the time (again my judgement which could be wrong) was hardest was HR onsite, then HR remote, then MakerPass then Telegraph Academy. Basically they had different tiers where they wanted to catch the tutions fees from all types of students with various talent levels.
I managed to pass the harder HR remote test after a few tries. What they do after a failed test, is to judge if you have potential, If yes then they will put you on a ptc program where an instructor will help you pass the test by practising similar questions to the test.
So what they are doing is picking students who they think are logically sound so that given the practise, they can get good in programming and get a job and improve their numbers.
So if you pass their test, given that you do learn and practise coding full time then you have the potential to get a coding job whether you go the bootcamp or do it on your own.Knowing what I know now, I would have used free code camp, lynda, uda , udemy to do it myself and be BETTER than what I am now.
Once selected, you a month long pre-course, where there is no teaching but they give you material to get you started on the basics, some they have developed, some from the internet, but nothing special. Before the course starts they test you again and if you fail, they will delay you to the next session.
Once started, intimidation starts, that they can ask anyone to leave during the first week based on their performance or not being continualy punctual and anyone can leave less their 2k deposit.
!!! HR if you are listening, People have left jobs and taken out a loan to come on the course and you have tested them twice and instead of taking responsibility, you threaten them.
First week is great, in terms of the planning and the recorded material that they have and they give you good understanding of javascript fundamentals. So more than 95% decide to stay. Actually you can get similar to week one from Marcus in this youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D136tQ2ngmE&index=2&list=PLAwxTw4SYaPmRCRPu9EjK-fWSccPwTOnc
But all that planning and making you understand the material STOPS after week one. They put you in pairs on sprints with little understanding and little time, so you struggle and concentrate on passing the tests that are pre-written for you. End result you and your pair struggle together, the one who understand more, ends up doing it and the weaker just sees it happening and wishes the stronger could part some knowledge on him. We never got to know how to write any tests during the sprints, as they were pre-written and never really understood the topic but somehow using helpdesk managed to complete the basic requirements. I mentioned Helpdesk, yes you get to use the helpdesk (which are former HR graduates) to get you out of a situation but don't expect they will make you understand as they are just meant to just point you in the right direction. As for the instructors (ours were former graduates), well you are not meant to direct email or slack them during the sprint as they are off limits and they give us their presence during a 30 minute townhall where you ask general questions before and after the sprint.
stayed tuned for part 2.
Before I start, let me answer what I read a couple of reviews back about refuting the hoodies for review claim. Well this person may have attended some previous year HR class when they were more of a learning institution than a business concerned more about bottom line.
Below is part of the email to HRR18, well after graduation as we were not being told about when hoodies were to be given.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How to Get Your Hack Reactor Hoodie
Some of you have asked about getting Hack Reactor hoodies, and here's the scoop:
Use this link (https://goo.gl/forms/amHidingTheLink) to complete a survey including the URL to a Quora review you have written about your experience at Hack Reactor Remote.
Here are a couple key points outlined in the header of the survey:
1.Please write your review on Quora (https://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Hack-Reactor-Remote-Beta)
2. Please leave a star rating. Note: You will need to copy/paste "★★★★★” (or however many stars you would like to give) into your review.
Please note that hoodies are shipped out in bulk every several weeks. You'll receive an email letting you know once your hoodie has been shipped.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So HR you can keep my hoodie with you, maybe it'll help your bottom line. Actually we never got anything from HR, not even a completion certification.
Now lets get to part2.
The part where they leave you alone in groups with no pratical help and they start the outcomes phase on writing a one page resume.(great but recruiters can spot that bootcamp resume from a mile)
Enough already said by others about the sad phase 2, I really felt for some of our cohort mates who were struggling and trying to find material on the internet but couldn't help them as I was also under pressure to finish.
At the end of the thesis we got a 15 minute code review. What only 15 mins....yes... and what a shame, he was more concerned about white spaces and length of the files than the actual code. To his defence I'll blame HR for putting him in this situation as how can you review code written by a team over 3-4 weeks in 15 mins so I guess best thing to do is be a code linter ( An idea you could train our beloved bot :) to do it for you)
Apart from this 15 mins , we never had a code review one to one for the whole course...you know why, it's because it costs time so they would have to pay for extra instructors. You had assessments and unless something wrong, you would never hear about them. When asked, they said no News is good News.What!!! is this a learning institute, where they dont even give you a grade. Yes, no grade given to you. If you are still insisting then book office hours.
Finishing the code review bit, now after HR that I've started the real learning and seen some application reviews, I can say our code was lacking in the proper way of writing a professional frontend code and now understand why a lot of companies were not replying back after seeing our github code.
One advise, Skills shortage is why you'll get a job and not HR (HR are just milking the gap)
I'll leave the rest for part 3 --(stay tuned for the episode where Tony makes an entrance)
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
RESPONSE TO HR'S RESPONSE: I'm not sure if you fully read my reviews, because I went into the specifics about each point that you addressed. I pointed out that there were stellar instructors, for instance, and I gave that category 4 stars, mind you. I also mentioned the outcome person that I do get to work with and that he is great, but you are still basically on your own(which is fine, but don't say you have great job assistance).
<...RESPONSE TO HR'S RESPONSE: I'm not sure if you fully read my reviews, because I went into the specifics about each point that you addressed. I pointed out that there were stellar instructors, for instance, and I gave that category 4 stars, mind you. I also mentioned the outcome person that I do get to work with and that he is great, but you are still basically on your own(which is fine, but don't say you have great job assistance).
What I'm really trying to say in this review is that I wholeheartedly believe in the "what you get is what you put in" that people say about HR all the time. I really do, and I did learn a lot from my experience at HR with some great mentors. HOWEVER, there were practices that I was not comfortable with, and I think prospective students deserve to know just how much one has to "put in" that has absolutely nothing to do with HR. For 18K, it's not really worth what I received, hence, 2 stars. My main issue is with the marketing material and strategy. There are things that are misleading, where others are just plain lies. Even something as small as "800+ of curriculum", why bother lying about something like that? The truth is, you have to learn a lot on your own, which is fine with me! The problem is that HR takes credit for that too, and people need to know what they are getting themselves into.
In short, don't expect Hack Reactor to teach you everything you need to know to get a decent software engineering job. You will learn a lot in the program, but it simply isn't enough.
I'm not saying Hack Reactor is useless, but if you expect to find a job right out of the bootcamp without a significant amount of additional work (unless you have a CS degree or prior SWE experience), you are grossly misguided by HR's marketing material. Also, I suspect the main reason that you don't see negative reviews, and the reason why it took me so long to post one, is that no one wants to burn bridges with HR, especially when they are still job searching.
Let me start by breaking down the different ratings:
Instructors: four stars, out of respect for the real expert instructors
The instructors who had real, solid industry experience were awesome. Honestly, you cannot hope for better in college professors. They were professional and knowledgeable. For those instructors, I would definitely give five stars. However, it seems to be the trend that they are adding more and more instructors that are graduates of the course, without ANY industry experience whatsoever. While they are very nice, they are not as professional, and you can tell that the quality of the lectures are much much lower. From what I can tell, there are now fewer of the former and more of the latter leading live lectures now.
By the way, for every live lecture, you'll probably watch 2 video ones, which would be fine if they were actually good and concise, but the quality of those are poor, especially since they include the occasional awkward silence and Q&A(instructor: who can tell me what x is? [goes through a number of students to get the right answer, then explain]). They could be 15 minute videos, but instead, they are 45 minutes because of that. Waste of my time. Also, I didn't pay tens of thousands to watch videos that are worse than free ones I can find online. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.
Curriculum: three stars, tldr - not nearly enough to get you a job
First six weeks: I learned a lot in these six weeks, even with the extremely fast pace. You will be able to create a simple full stack app by the end of it. For this part of the curriculum, I would give it 5 stars. While we don't get much time with the good instructors, you learn a lot from working with your peers, and I actually really enjoyed pair programming. The HiRs(HR TAs) also have the most to offer during this time.
Last six weeks: this is the part where you get essentially no lectures, and no help from the HiRs. The HiRs can help you in the first six weeks because they are familiar with the sprint, but since they are recent graduates themselves, they cannot help you during your thesis because you may be using tech they are not familiar with, and your projects are more complicated and your questions more specific. As the other reviews mentioned, your success depends on your peers, or you have to do all the work if they let you (since you can have useless teammates that won't let you touch "their part").
After graduation: while they tell you to start job search immediately, you quickly realize that you don't know enough. When you express that, their solution? "you have imposter syndrome". Things you realize you have to work on before feeling comfortable with the interview process: fundamental web development concepts, CSS (HR doesn’t teach you any of this), CS fundamentals(things expected from CS grads that you don't know), data structures(HR spends 4 days on it at the beginning of the course, but it's not close to enough), algorithms strategies, and anything you missed during the course because the pace was too fast or you werent responsible for a certain technology in group projects.
Job Assistance: two stars, not one only because our outcomes guy is a Rockstar
Basically, don't expect much. Our outcomes guy is really great(but seriously over worked, wtf HR), and we get good help with resumes and job search strategies. But again, when you don't feel prepared, its not enough. I shouldn't feel so dishonest for saying I am a solid web developer when there are still so many holes in my knowledge that I have to search through the internet on my own to learn.
You don't get connected with anyone, and there's no hiring day as others have mentioned. You are basically on your own. You have to go out of your way to network, cold contact people, apply to hundreds of jobs, all of which you have to do on your own. You get added to the HR alumni slack channel though, again, what you get is all on you, they don't help much.
In conclusion, Hack Reactor is not completely useless, but they are not honest. They make it sound like they can get you a job soon after graduation or you get a job because of them, but in reality, you have to do a lot more of your own work than you expect. Just a few examples of their misleading practices:
One succeeds because of their own hard work, not because of Hack Reactor. HR is only one part of your journey. I definitely learned a lot from the bootcamp, but I need to put it out there that it is not what it seems. It is not a replacement for a proper degree, nor will it prepare you enough to get a job. You prepare yourself. You work hard to earn it.
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
So whenever I write a review, I try to keep things factual and transparent...mainly because I'm just a regular non-IT guy trying to get into fulltime web development. I've mastered HTML and CSS but its time to get serious about Immersive.
I first contacted Hack Reactor through the number on their website. This turned out to be a gigantic waste of time...as calls kept getting routed to someone called "MakerSquare"...and the Chinese guy who answered had no clue about any kind of...
So whenever I write a review, I try to keep things factual and transparent...mainly because I'm just a regular non-IT guy trying to get into fulltime web development. I've mastered HTML and CSS but its time to get serious about Immersive.
I first contacted Hack Reactor through the number on their website. This turned out to be a gigantic waste of time...as calls kept getting routed to someone called "MakerSquare"...and the Chinese guy who answered had no clue about any kind of Bootcamp.
So then I contacted them through their facebook website, facebook has this live messenger type thing, kind of like live customer support.
The lady who was typing in the chatbox let me know that most of the instructors are HIR...Hackers In Residence...which is just a fancy way of saying "Former Graduates".
I was like, seriously? You want me to pay 20k tuition to be trained by someone who used to work at Walmart or used to make sandwiches at Panera Bread?
Complete and total scam...all their placement numbers on their website are un-verified and probably unrealistic.
You can get the same education for 50% less anywhere else.
Stay away from these guys.
-Harry
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
I wish I had read an honest review specifically the one by Nori Maki Arare before spending around 20k dollars.
No one tells you that instructions are recorded from 2014 when Marcus used to teach. Now all you get are those old sprints and recorded lectures and help from students who themselves have just graduated as HiR's or some who have been hired permanantely from previous cohorts.
I wish I had read an honest review specifically the one by Nori Maki Arare before spending around 20k dollars.
No one tells you that instructions are recorded from 2014 when Marcus used to teach. Now all you get are those old sprints and recorded lectures and help from students who themselves have just graduated as HiR's or some who have been hired permanantely from previous cohorts.
Often found them lacking in knowledge during the sprints. For the thesis forget about getting any help from them. I actually never bothered using any help and just struggled through the thesis.
Seen a number of students struggle through the course as they thought entering the course meant they will become programmers, a number always drop, a number just remain poor till the end.
Your study begins once the course is finished as you've spent 20k , now go all out on your own studying till you are good enough to get a job, can take upto 6 months
Don't think its a 3 month course to get a job
one month pre-course, 3 months course and HR publishes audited reports for students taking upto 6 months to find jobs. So we could have done it on our own in 10 months with our money intact.
Join free code camp, get udemey coupon vouchers, make a schedule, then all you need are cohort mates so you can pair program. If you want to get to know the tools, take a hack reactor or anyother bootcamp prep course for 600 odd dollars.
Its just a money making machine with a pumped up outcomes phase. I wish they had invested our money in great teachers which makes great students.
As more and more of these bootcamps are springing, I've found that the job market for new engineers is overcrowded so lets see if it takes our cohort 6 months or more ??
Harsh Patel of Hack Reactor
COO
Dec 09, 2016
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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