Sabio

Let's get this out of the way because it's probably the first question on your mind - soon after the training at Sabio, I got a good job, making much more money than I've ever made before to do what I love to do: code. The vast majority of my cohort has done the same.

After you're done with the training, you will have the skills you need to be a junior-level, full-stack .NET developer. You only need to do a couple of quick searches on any of the major job-search engines to see that this skillset is in tremendous demand.

The owners, Gregorio and Liliana, along with their excellent group of instructors, have put together a rigorous curriculum that is focused on practical, hands-on learning supplemented by concise, focused lectures and a rich collection of curated reading materials. The real-world app you build during the training, the recorded lectures and the readings are all available to you after the program is finished and will serve as valuable reference materials for your future projects. When I was done with the program, I knew I was ready to hit the workforce.

But to call Sabio just a quality bootcamp doesn't do it justice. It's also a support system, a professional network, and a community. I have benefited tremendously from the insights and advice of Sabio alums that were already working in the industry when I was going through the program and looking for work afterwards. I've enjoyed going to the monthly professional development seminars where skilled lecturers discuss topics that are truly relevant to today's tech landscape. I've gone to hackathons, dinners and happy hours with intelligent, motivated developers who all want what I want: to constantly get better. None of this would have been in my life had it not been for Sabio.

So, when I say that attending Sabio was one of the best decisions I've made in my life, you know I'm not exaggerating. It's not easy, and you will be pushed to your limits in many different respects, but, in the end it will be worth it.

If you are reading this post it means that you are about to make life changing decision, but you want to make sure it is the right one. Within the posts below you will find valuable information that will help you take action. Register, don't wait any longer.

The only advice I can offer you is to fully immerse yourself in CODE. You will get out what you put in. Which means that you have to dedicate all of you time in this if you want to succeed. Don't partially commit, fully commit! You will end up blaming others for your failures. Stay positive, always. Your life is a reflection of your thoughts.

I was looking for a bootcamp and I ALMOST landed at GA. (THANKS TO THE DEVELOPER GODS I DIDNT!!)

I was searching around wanting to improve my skills and I landed at Sabio! (THANKS TO THE DEVELOPER GODS AGAIN!!!)

THIS IS MY EXPERIENCE

AND WHAT YOU SHOULD  BE REALLY BE AWARE OF!

BEFORE and DURING SABIO –

I had QA experience but 0 Development experience. Sabio trained me to be a Software Engineer!  

You learn full stack development (Front, mid, and back end).  (AngularJs, JQuery, Javascript, .net, C#,SQL) + MORE

WHEN I WAS JOB SEARCHING:

The technologies learned at Sabio are the latest and greatest! The skills acquired at Sabio are in really high demand! You get calls for jobs literally every day!

I went through the job process and was given an offer at the end of the month with the help of Sabio! (I actually was on vacation the first two weeks after bootcamp)

WHATS THE JOB MARKET LIKE?

Your chances of landing a job are even higher than other bootcamps!

Sure… React, Node, Ruby on rails are cool but not as much as the ones you learn at Sabio.

 Don’t believe me? Search for “React, Node, or Ruby on rails” and juxtapose to “C#, .Net, Jquery or AngularJS” Find out yourself! There are 3X more jobs (if not more) when you search  these.

WHY SABIO?
It was more cost effective than other bootcamps (They should raise their prices because it’s worth more)

You even get a discount coupon here !

Their instructors are MINIMUM of 10+ years experienced in development (if not more).
They are there to help you out in person for 40+ hours and when you contact them with questions when you’re at home they are more than willing to help!

It was purposely a smaller class so I could have more attention to all my questions! As a developer now, I can see how hard it would be to have a traditional amount of students in a class.

Their job placement rate is over 90%! (That’s because they don’t count entrepreneurs or people that just wanted to have this as a skill for retirement. Why would they?)

They really care to help you move forward.

They provide assistance in everything! (preparation for course, training, job search)

They are completely honest and have a 5 year program!

IF YOU DECIDE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE:

Ask how long their instructors have been developing.(They will hire their instructors with 3 years’ experience!) LOL…(Im really not making this up! Go to other bootcamps job fairs and youll see)

Make sure its not only front end. You’re limiting yourself way too much for what you’re paying.

Ask about the job placement rate after bootcamp. (Make sure you are specific in asking  developer or engineer jobs) LOL (Going back to their old job doesn’t count…what would be the purpose of their bootcamp?! haha)

ME:

I’ll forever be grateful.

I would do it again!

Im not saying all of this just to say it. I am looking at the code here and I’m considered better than these developers thanks to SABIO!

YOU:

Theres a reason why you read my whole post. I likely made you realize a thing or two ;)

If you are looking for a bootcamp, I can honestly say Sabio will be the best bet. Watch…..

With a prior degree in a non-technical field, I struggled to find a career. But I knew I wanted to code. After extensive research into bootcamps, one immediately outshined the rest in LA/OC.

Why Sabio?

• Learn from seasoned industry professionals
• Benefit from a student-instructor ratio of 10:1
• Build an actual product, unique to each cohort
• Do more hands-on coding, with focused lectures
• Grow with 5 years of professional development

Above and beyond the relevant technical skills, job onboarding, and one-on-one mentorship, the most valuable gift I received was seeing what can be achieved through believing in one’s self.

My Sabio experience instilled in me the confidence to get my resume out there, go on every single interview, accept an offer, and start a career as a Full Stack Web Developer. Yes, it is worth it.

A million thanks to Gregorio, Liliana, Aaron, John, Jimmy and the entire Sabio community for being the genuine, dedicated, patient, caring, lovely people that they are and for making all of these success stories possible.

I. My Job Before Sabio: Server at a restaurant. 

II. My Job After Sabio: Software Application Support and Engineer at LA Capital

III. Why Sabio:

     A. Learn technology that gets you jobs!

          1. I learned HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJs, ASP.NET                   MVC, ASP.NET Wep API, C#, SQL Server, T-Sql, etc. 

          2.  Fact: JavaScript, C#, SQL is in the top 5 of most popular technologies.                         AngularJs came out 2010, but is already in the top 10.                                                         (Source: http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016)

          - Gregorio, Lily, & Staff are constantly networking with local companies in LA/OC             to find out appropriate technology to teach. 

     B. Great Staff!

          1. Instructors here have decades of experience! You be the judge, check them out:                 a. Gregorio Rojas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fierro                                                           b. Aaron Gibson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devrhino                                                         c. John Darragh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/entrotech                                       

          2. Liliana Aide Monge, the co-founder and CEO, does a great job to execute what             Sabio promises.

          3. The passion that all the staff shares sets the tone for the successful culture                  at Sabio. 

     C. Great job assistance!

          1. Mock interviews

          2. Technical interview preparation lectures

          3. Assistance with writing technical resumes

          4. Updating LinkedIn Profile (plus Professional Photographer for Profile Picture)

          5. Networking with local recruiters

          6. Hackathons

          7. Meetups 

          8. Expertise on how to communicate with recruiters and company HRs. 

          9. Provide Professional References 

         10. 5 years of mentoring after you graduate.

My Background: B.S. Electrical Engineering from UC Davis, Real Estate and some prior programming experience. Current Title: Software Engineer.

Reasons why I think Sabio was my best choice:

BEFORE AND DURING TRAINING
- Pre-work: 3 months of weekly meetings for pre-work.
- Real Experience: We did real software development work for a real company which means I had real work experience that I could put in my resume.
- Work Environment: We worked in a work environment akin to a startup (small group of people, lots of research in Google and Stack Overflow).
- Relevant curriculum: We used the latest tools, methodologies and technologies that are relevant to the job market today. 
- Selective: Only hard-working, driven, not entitled, not spoon-fed people are allowed into the program. This is the kind of people I enjoy working with. 
- Feedback: Sabio asks for your feedback during and after bootcamp and really listens to your individual needs and goals. I asked my instructor that, because of my prior coding experience, I should be given more challenging tasks, and sure enough I was given those.
- Entrepreneurship: Sabio has support for people who are looking for a job but also for people who later decide to go on business by themselves.
- Soft-Skills: daily stand-up meetings, collaboration, pair programming, mock interviews, etc.

The above reasons were enough for my decision to join Sabio. However, there is much more, which made it a no-brainer to join.

AFTER TRAINING 
- Professional Development Sessions: Meetings to learn more advanced CS topics for advancing your career. Head of React at Facebook joining us for a Q&A session at Sabio HQ.
- Hackathons: Never attended one but would like to someday. 
- Networking: recruiters, industry players, my own cohort and other cohorts.
- Industry Research: The leadership team is constantly researching what are the most relevant things to learn so we can focus on that.
- Recruiters: A month after graduation I got a job through a recruiter introduced by Sabio.
- None of the graduates are hired back by Sabio.
- Community: Thankful graduates hang out in the chat room and help each other out with questions from work, questions from students in session, give job leads, etc.
- 5 years mentorship program
- Sabio says they are not done with you until you are making 6 figures: I believe this will happen sooner rather than later.
- I was overwhelmed with calls from employers, recruiters, and interviews. Sometimes I had 2 on-site interviews in one day. I even had the luxury to cancel one of my on-site interviews. I never had so many interviews. This is my highest salary ever. Most of the positions I interviewed for were actually senior positions and I think I did fairly well on those.

If you are planning to attend a bootcamp in SoCal, then look no further. Sabio will give you the absolute best return on your money, and then some.

Prior to Sabio, my professional background was primarily in digital marketing reporting and analytics. I had dabbled a bit with SQL and R and got a taste for how powerful programming can be. In September, I learned that my entire team (myself included) was being laid off at the end of the year. I'd been there almost 8 years and this led me to seriously consider attending a coding bootcamp to finally make a change. I researched several in Orange County then came across Sabio. I met with Liliana and Gregorio in Culver City and knew I'd be hard pressed to find a better program.

What really stood out to me about Sabio: 

• They offer several weeks of in-person pre-work sessions which helped establish a solid foundation prior to the 12 week 60-70 hrs/week intensive program
• Small cohort size - no more than 10 in any given cohort
• Experience working on a real project for a real company and essentially working as a real development team during the 12 week intensive program
• 5 years of continued professional development beyond graduation, which is an added bonus as I aim to continue to learn and grow in my career. 

When I learned that they would soon be starting a cohort in Newport Beach, my decision was made as I was really reluctant to battle with the 405 for 3 hours a day :)

I was very fortunate to have Aaron Gibson as my instructor for both the pre-work sessions and the 12 week program. Aaron is one of the most patient, encouraging and hard-working individuals I've had the pleasure of knowing. He's an amazing leader and really helped push my fellow cohort members and I to do our best and keep learning. 

I completed the full-stack program at the end of March and just accepted an offer for a Software Developer position at a SaaS company that creates software that insurance companies use. I start Monday and am super excited! Thank you, Sabio!!

Where do I start, if you are anything like me, you might be going through some online resources right now, you might be doing some free courses or even purchasing some paid online courses, going to youtube, reasearching bootcamps, going to different meetings, day dreaming at your current job or whatever place you are, about what you can become or where you want to be. Then you meet Liliana and Gregorio, down to earth, honest people, who will tell you where you are and where you can be as long as you are willing to walk the walk. Then your first day comes, you are excited, you think to yoursefl, 'hey, this might not be that hard after all... then boom, the harsh truth kicks in.

Don't come in thinking this is going to be a easy, don't come in thinking you won't be challenged and certainly don't come in thinking someone will be holding your hand through out this process.

By that one bad review I can tell you, If you are that sort of person who wants everything to be handed out to you, then this boot camp will not work for you. Why? because here you will have to think, you will have to reason, you will have to make an effort. What's that old saying about giving you the fish or teaching you how to fish? That could have been something Gregorio wrote a long time ago. 

This guy will push you to your limits, he will show you what you are capable of and will be constantly challenging you to be who you want to be. Will he be hard on you? yes, will he help you? yes. Read the reviews, it is NOT a lie, Sabio will change your life and you know what the best part is? It will be 40% Sabio, 40% YOU and 20% your cohort.

Which brings me to that point, your cohort, I love my cohort, this guys will stand beside you no matter what issues you are having understanding, I doubt that is any different in any other cohort. You get to meet people with the same mindset as you and that truly makes it part of your family.

No review out there will make justice to what you experience there, nothing you can hear, read, watch, research, will give you an exact idea of what is to be part of Sabio. It's an experience you have to go through to understand what it is to be a Sabio fellow. And you know what, I dare ANYONE out there to challenge a Sabio fellow, they'll be in for a treat.

Sabio is not a school, Sabio is not a boot camp, Sabio is a set of mind, a door to a better you. It's hard, but you are never alone, ever, and that makes this worth it. This is not a gamble, they have a plan, they know what their doing and are more than happy to show you the way to a new you.

Oh and I guess if you are like me you want to know how long did it take me to get an offer; 2 weeks after graduation I received my first contract and I'm not even counting a few other offers that I did not take due to personal reasons.

Saying thank you is not enough, I'm going to have to create an algorithm to try to convey what I feel about Sabio but hey, you know what?...now I can.

                                                                                                           "Just Do It"  

Before I chose Sabio, I had been to other bootcamps' info sessions. I was looking for a place that takes me seriously, provides interesting learning environment, and last but not the least, trains me to be an experienced developer, which means my skill sets need to be validated and accepted by an employer after I complete the program. Now that I have completed the program and got several job offers within a month, I can assure you Sabio meets all my requirements and gave me more than what I expected.

There are many things I can write here regarding how much I enjoyed learning coding at Sabio, but I will try to keep my points short so you have an idea of what other things you will get BESIDES STRONG CODING SKILLS.

Porblem Solving Skill: Throughout the program, I learnt not only straight forward coding skills like c#, .NET MVC, JavaScript, AngularJS, etc., but also problem solving skills. Some of the interviewers I met were more interested in my problem solving skills than in my actual coding skills (Well, I guess my Github code sample has showed them my coding ability.) At Sabio, instructors don't spoon feed you answers to problems you have; instead, they spend longer time teaching you essential debugging skills and make YOU the problem solver. Obviously, it is a lot harder to train your problem solving skills than just giving your the answer and you will benefit significantly in the long run by acquiring that skill!! 

Motivation: The program is a little intensive, but it is SO rewarding. Of all the people I met here, I have not seen anyone who was bored or under-motivated. Everyone comes here in the morning pumped up and ready to work on a specific functionality of an application. I have had bootcamp tryout sessions else where, and they really bored me and made me feel like coding is such a hard thing to learn. Well, HERE it is simple and fun. Guaranteed. Been a student at USC and at Sabio, I see that good instructors share one special quality: they make things easier to comprehend and interesting to hold your attention, of which I really appreciate.

Confidence: Being a software developer who can jump into lines of code and solve the problems will boost anyone's confidence. After you go through this program, if you look at a website or phone application and see a certain functionality isn't working, you would most likely know where to check inside the code. From my experience, it feels awesome to know what I am capable of doing to make things better. For example, when I was applying for jobs, I noticed that many job-seeking websites change the format of your resume and often times, your full position title from your past experience is altered and education information is gone. It gives your employer a hard time to skim through your background and make wise decisions based on that impression of you. It could be a formatting design choice or the LinkedIn API was not correctly implemented. Either way, some thing can be improved. Consequently, I’m starting my own side project of creating a resume builder, hoping to create an optimized tool to build people’s resume.

Conclusion:

Throughout my time here, I am thankful for everything I learnt here. You can probably tell how much I appreciate this place by seeing how long this review is (I’ve never written a review this long.) I genuinely hope you have the opportunity to join Sabio and start your fabulous career as a developer too!

The facts:

I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears!) with a B.A. in Biology in December 2014. I had no prior coding experience. I never had a full-time job. In October 2015, I took the risk and invested in myself by enrolling in Sabio's bootcamp.

At Sabio, I worked 20-30 hours/week during the Pre-Work phase (October 2015 - December 2015) and 55-60 hours/week during the Bootcamp phase (January 2016 - March 2016). 

I graduated from Sabio's first Orange County cohort (aka Sabio's 13th cohort overall) on March 25, 2016. One day prior to graduating, I received an offer for a full-time job with benefits as a Web Developer at SynerMed. Although I won't disclose my exact salary, I will say it is >$60k. Pretty sweet ROI for the $13k tuition I paid IMO!

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Why Sabio:

I applied, interviewed, and received offers of admission to a few coding bootcamps in the LA/OC area. However, I chose to enroll in Sabio's bootcamp for several reasons:

• Instructors: Sabio currently has 3 main instructors who are all very knowledgable and experienced. My instructor Aaron has 13+ years of professional coding experience, but what resonated with me more is that he is incredibly patient, encouraging, humble, motivated, hard-working, and genuinely invested in our success. He will sit down and take the time to teach and reteach you when you're struggling, but also challenge you when he sees you're ready for it. He saw the potential in me as a developer that even I didn't see, and I am so thankful that he kept pushing me even when I doubted my abilities. He works so hard (even to the point of getting sick) because he fully believes in Sabio and makes it his goal to make sure that anyone who is willing to put in the work can learn to code well. 
   
• Culture fit: I knew I'd be working with my cohort for 40-70 hours/week for 12 weeks, so it was important that I could work well with everyone to get the most out of this experience. I was so thankful to be part of such a hard-working cohort because seeing them work hard made me want to work even harder to see what we could accomplish individually and together. We all learned things quickly, but it was never an issue if someone fell behind because we would always help each other. We knew we were all in this together, and one person's success was everyone's success. Egos were never an issue because there was always a high level of humility and mutual respect amongst everyone. It was also really great to see so many backgrounds (e.g. age, gender, cultures, ethnicities, professional backgrounds, etc.) come together in a program like Sabio.
   
• PreWork: For me, I prefer have more time to learn more. Therefore, I liked having the additional 3 months via PreWork to learn the basics of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and C# before starting the Bootcamp phase. It definitely made it an easier transition into the intensive Bootcamp phase, and I learned more than I would have if I only had 3 months to absorb all of the PreWork and Bootcamp material. Plus, if time is money, then I got a bargain through Sabio!
   
• Curriculum: Sabio does an amazing job researching and understanding what the LA/OC tech job market is looking for and constantly tweaks their curriculum to match it. For example, in the last 2 years, AngularJS has skyrocketed in demand, so Sabio's curriculum changed accordingly. Regardless of the language learned at Sabio, what's even more valuable is how Sabio's curriculum trains you to break a big coding problem down into smaller, more managable problems that you can feel confident taking on. 
   
• Real-world experience: This is what makes Sabio especially unique IMO. Every cohort gets to work on a web development project for a REAL company. For my cohort, we created a web application (specifically, an admin panel) for BeautyStreams, a beauty trend forecasting company in France. Every member of my cohort got to work on several features of the application and would have weekly/bi-weekly meetings with BeautyStreams' employee(s) to present our progress. In return for our contributions, we got to put them down as an employer on our resume and were able to list them as professional references during our job hunt. Plus, it's much easier to get a job as a Web Developer is A LOT easier when you're already working as a Web Developer on a real project for a real company, don't you think?
   
• Job support: Sabio gave me the opportunity to have my resume critiqued by those who have 13+ years of professional coding experience. In addition, Sabio provided a list of 200 inteview questions (that were actually asked in my interviews!) + supplemental material. They also hosted mock technical interviews. Sabio has so many connections to technical recruiters that have placed Sabio fellows in the past. and they bring these recruiters to meet us. In addition, we all help each other get jobs by referring each other to awesome job opportunities that we get from recruiters.
   
• 5-year mentorship program: After you graduate, you're still a member of the Sabio family for 5 years through their professional mentorship program. You will not be left alone to fend for yourself after you finish. This was especially important for me because the bootcamp and my first job is only the beginning of my journey. I want continual guidance to develop my skills and career as a developer, and Sabio provides that through monthly professional development sessions, hackathons, mixers, and hiring events. In addition, we all keep in touch with Slack after graduating, so if we ever need career advice or are struggling with our code at our jobs/personal projects, we can directly message our instructors or anyone in the Sabio family for help.

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Choosing and going through a bootcamp is like dating. It's a big commitment and will take up a lot of your time and money. Some days will be great, some days will be difficult, but it will all be worth it when you find the right one for you. Hopefully, my (lenghty) insight helps you make a more informed choice of whether Sabio is your perfect match!

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Quick side note:

Regarding the negative review below titled "Fradulent bogus camp", I have to respectfully disagree, based on my experience at real technical job interviews.

During my 3-hour in-person technical interview at SynerMed, my interviewers actually ENCOURAGED me to use Google, Stack Overflow, etc. to develop an algorithm to solve their coding challenges. They did this for several reasons:

1. To simulate the real work environment of developers. At their jobs, developers of all experience levels will use Google and Stack Overflow as a starting point to solve their code block. My interviewers wanted to see that I can efficiently search online for the right information instead of getting stuck, wasting time, and/or giving up.
2. To see that I can learn new information quickly from Google & S/O search results.
3. To see that I can apply what I learned from Google & S/O to the unique problem at hand.

And in the end, I demonstrated these things to them and got a job out of it :) 

Don't waste your time looking elsewhere!!! This is the best bootcamp ever! You will never regret your decision! Sabio makes you work on a real project, developing it from the back end to the front end, applying industry standard practices. This is why they are different from the rest of the bootcamps out there. The full stack course is intense, but all the hardwork you would put in will be worth it because you will learn so much in your training, not just in theory but in practice. Job recruiters come to the campus for possible work even before graduating. Aaron, who teaches in the Orange County location, has the experience and expertise to lead you to your new career and he's also very patient. :) I am very thankful to Gregorio and Liliana for founding this wonderful community of developers, it's like being a part of a family. Sabio is there to train and support you even after your graduation. It's a very rewarding experience! Sabio will truly change your career for the better as they did mine. :)

First and foremost I want to say that I received an offer of FULL TIME employment 4 days after graduating with a yearly income of 73k.

I was in the same place you are right now (yes you!  reading this review wondering whether you should join Sabio). At that time my biggest concern was whether I could actually get employment. Now that I am on the other side, I can confidently say that yes you will find employment and  I can tell you that Sabio will give you everything you need to make that happen.

What's amazing and truly unique about Sabio is the passion that Gregorio, Liliana, Aaron, John, and Jimmy have for the success of each student. It is evident as soon as you speak with them that they are in this for more than just profit. They want to make a difference in your life.

I want to thank Gregorio and Liliana for fighting against all odds to create this family.