Hack Reactor

Hack Reactor was an exhausting but wonderful three months. I really enjoyed the semi-structured aspect of the sprints (first half) and being able to dig deeper into the things that were interesting to me. The pairing was useful as well - I frequently... Read More learned tips from my classmates and was able to reinforce my own understanding by having to talk about code. The second half was much less structured, and while I enjoyed it a little less, it was a great opportunity to practice developing in the same repo with other engineers and tackle more complex problems.

I found the interview prep that occurred throughout the program to be well aligned to interviews that I experienced in the job search. While Hack Reactor didn't teach me everything I needed to know to do my eventual job, it provided great foundational knowledge that I was able to use to learn other things, and in a shorter timeframe than I would have been able to do all by myself. The things I use most today (5 years later!) are the deep dive into JS internals and the debugging process. Instructors were super smart and were great at breaking down concepts. I'd happily take more courses from Marcus or Fred in the future. The career search staff was energetic and invested in our success, and while most of the staff from my cohort are no longer with the company, Marlene (who does alumni job support) is awesome - no-nonsense, caring, and focused. Overall, if I could go back and time and do it again, I would.

For context, I graduated in 2015 and I realize the school, curriculum, and even the industry have changed since then.

Hack Reactor radically shifted the entire trajectory of my life in the most positive way. I was able to go from being a "failed" artist... Read More to beginning my career as a Software Engineer. I look back on the time spent there as one of the pivotal moments in my life.

I had expected the program to be challenging, but honestly, nothing prepared me for how much of a whirlwind of work it would be. It was easily the most challenging educational endeavor i'd ever taken on. While it easily pushed me to my limits, being surrounded by equally motivated, driven, and enjoyable cohort-mates helped me tackle the challenges presented by the curriculum.

More importantly, the ongoing career support through the Alumni program, facilitated by the one and only Marlene, has been an absolute game changer that continues to pay dividends all these years later. Marlene isn't just one of the most caring and compassionate people I know, she has more experience helping people prepare and secure jobs than anyone I have ever met. Every question, concern, and anxiety that surrounds the job search are deftly answered by her and often with suggestions of entirely different approaches I never would have imagined on my own.

Hack Reactor gave me an opportunity and a career I would have never imagined for myself and I will forever be indebted to the program for what it provided me.

I graduated from Hack Reactor in 2015, and have since then worked at startups (Planet and Patreon), tech giants (Google), and even started my own company (Babylon House), and I can say with no reservations: Hack Reactor is the best of the best. The instruction... Read More is top notch, the leadership is excellent, and the alumni community, thanks to the endless energy and enthusiasm of Marlene Tang, is better than even an Ivy League school or Google. Had I a chance to go back in time and advise my high-school self, I wouldn't tell him to get a CS degree; I'd tell him about Hack Reactor.

I attended HR in 2018 at their SF campus. It was an experience for sure. I did not come from a CS background but had some experience doing QA at a small web dev shop. I will say that if you can / are willing to put in the time, Hack Reactor will support... Read More you. They will not hold your hand the entire time or even half that, but they will give you the resources and more importantly (at least in my case) the community to help you best leverage those resources. There was a common joke at the time that all of us had migrated to SF from far away places and paid a large amount of money to just sit in a room and struggle for 3 months. What that experience taught me is how to communicate thoughts to others in a relatable way, how to ask the right questions not only of others but also to google, and how to learn things quickly. I think these things are some of the most important skills that you can have going into the tech industry. HR will tell you to ask questions if you don't understand something, please do me a favor and listen to them when they say that. There is honestly no better space I've yet found to feel so comfortable not knowing the answer.

At least when you're in person, the additional resources after you complete HR are incredibly noteworthy. At the SF campus, I could schedule mock interviews with other students and instructors, talk to career coaches, and get inspired to keep pushing as many of my cohortmates were also searching out of the base of operations that was located at the galvanize campus.

I will not lie and say that it is easy. Sure it'll be easier for some, but not so much for others. I am others. I spent the next six months after graduating, juggling work and a job search in a foreign and expensive city with no contacts other than classmates. And I ended up finding work not in SF. It was a draining process. But I have to say it was worth it in the end once I'd finally accomplished what I'd set out to do.

Enter 2020, I lost my first job to a reorganization and was back on the search in the middle of the pandemic. There is a whole network of people that I was able to contact via a HR alumni's slack group and an extremely talented alumni career coach that put me in touch with some alumni for interviews. When I finally was in the final stages of my negotiations with another company that same career coach gave excellent advice on how to properly negotiate for what I needed from my new employer.

All in all, I think it's a worthwhile investment, but by no means is it a guarantee of success in a particular amount of time.

I attended Hack Reactor back in 2015. The time I had there was a blast. The curriculum was a pretty good mixture of practical learning, some CS fundamentals, and interview preparation. From what I hear, the curriculum has kept pace with the direction... Read More the industry has gone in (e.g. switching from Angular in the curriculum to React). At the end of the day, what I enjoyed the most was being surrounded by like-minded, enthusiastic peers. That more than anything is what Hack Reactor provides. That is, except for the post-graduation job support. I remember coming out of the bootcamp feeling decently prepared for job interviews. I've had friends from other programs who've graduated from other bootcamps and it seems like this is less of a focus for them.

I wanted a bootcamp that offered a rigorous program that would teach me the skills and knowledge needed to become a software engineer. Hack Reactor definitely delivered that. Since the program is only three months, there were many things I didn't learn... Read More during the bootcamp and had to learn on the job. However, Hack Reactor taught me how to learn and problem solve on my own, which, I believe, is the main benefit of attending. In addition to teaching the technical skills and knowledge, they provide great career services that prepare and support students for and during their job searches. Marlene supported me a lot during the negotiation process for both my first and second job. She coached and advised me on what to say and how to counter, which was super helpful since I had never negotiated an offer before. Lastly, Hack Reactor has a large alumni network and community, which is very beneficial for career opportunities or advice.

It's hard to sum up what Hack Reactor has meant to me in just a few paragraphs. As a matter of fact, I've been putting off writing this review because every time I start I get overwhelmed with emotion.

Hack Reactor enabled me to turn my life around. Not... Read More just in terms of a career, but in every way possible.

It is, by far, one of the most rigorous programs in this space. I know this because since graduating in May 2017, I have taught, mentored and worked with other graduates from other bootcamps. I won't mention the schools by name, but suffice it to say that they're also fairly well known. As I came to discover an established name doesn't necessarily equate to consistent quality.

As a matter of fact, many graduates from other bootcamps envied me for the continuing community support I received well past graduation. For example, I'm currently in my second job search and Marlene, the Alumni Director, has been a stellar point-of-contact in helping me stay emotionally grounded as well as connecting me to exciting job leads. She treats all alums like her babies and you won't be able to resist her maternal affection.
And that's my point: Hack Reactor is filled to the brim with Marlenes. Just talk to former technical mentors, or even the CEO, Harsh Patel, and you'll instantly know that you aren't just a paycheck to them. They put all of themselves into this work, because they truly want to see you succeed. When you graduate from Hack Reactor, you aren't just walking away with skills for a new career, you're also joining a diverse and empathetic community of top notch software engineers, from places like Square, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. (Seriously, the list is long)

This is not to say there aren't flaws in the system. Of course there are. But even when someone falls through the cracks, I've seen Hack Reactor put their best effort into catching them at the bottom and lifting them back up. I don't expect perfection out of anything, but at least HR always strives for it. To me, that's what matters.

Hack Reactor was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. It really put me on an entirely different trajectory. Even after 4 years I can still ask for help in negations for a new job. The staff always goes above and beyond. The students are... Read More top notch.

I went through Hack Reactor in 2014 and had a great time back then. My original experience with the program is less relevant than the more recent reviews you see, so I want to talk about job and negotiation help that I received 6 years after graduating... Read More during my third job search in 2020. I received offers from Amazon, Box, Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Square and was having a hard time making the final call between joining Facebook and Netflix. I'd been discussing my decision in the alumni Slack group, and Marlene, the alumni director, reached out to me to see if she could help. It's a big help to have a total pro on your side when you're talking with recruiters. Marlene gave me some invaluable advice over the final week of my negotiations and helped me seal the deal with Netflix. Before all of this, I gained huge benefits by practicing for interviews with members of the alumni community. I can't think of a better group to be in to get such a good pulse on working in the tech industry. All this to say, Hack Reactor isn't just a one-time thing you go through for a few months and forget about. There's a huge and growing community of people who want to help you throughout your career, and every year, I'm more glad I joined this community.

It’s been almost four years since I’ve graduated from the program (SF onsite, June - September 2016), but enough people have reached out to me since then that I felt like it was worth the time to summarize my thoughts and experiences for others.

Hack... Read More Reactor was, by far, one of the best decisions I’ve made to jumpstart my career. I did pretty extensive research beforehand to try to figure out which bootcamp was right for me, and HR stood out immediately because of how structured and intense it was. I was serious about making the career pivot as quickly as possible, and I wanted to be surrounded by people who would push me to be my best.

The curriculum (and industry) changes enough that it’s probably not worth me focusing on the education side of it, so instead, I want to talk about the job placement support afterwards. Both jobs that I’ve gotten since graduating are due to the Hack Reactor network, and specifically, the alumni support program. I truly believe that the resources available after graduation is worth the entire financial investment and more. I was assigned Marlene as my career coach, and I seriously lucked out. She truly goes above and beyond the scope of her duties to ensure that she is accessible at all hours and under all circumstances. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve reached out minutes before phone interviews for last-minute pep talks, or spent hours of her time getting her help to draft the perfect response during salary negotiations. When I started my second job search, I reached out to Marlene on a whim to see if she might be able to give some job search advice, but she went even further to connect me with other alumni, the corporate partnership program, and personally coached me through each one of the offers I landed. I was one and a half years past my graduation date, and she wasn’t even a full-time career coach anymore, but it didn’t matter to her. However, it truly made a huge difference for me to not have to go through the job search and interview process on my own.

Everyone’s post-graduation experience is different, but what I truly think makes Hack Reactor stand out is that they actually have dedicated resources to make sure your successes don’t end after you finish your classes. Having Marlene by my side during the most life-altering job search of my career is something that I will be forever grateful for and why I consistently recommend Hack Reactor to others who are seriously considering coding bootcamps to make the career shift. It’s worth the investment a thousand times over.