Lighthouse Labs

I had little to no experience in coding prior to joining LHL but graduated with enough knowledge and experience to change the course of my career. I can now write my own full stack applications from scratch and have become more aware of what technologies are available to learn. It is a wonderful way to challenge and fully immerse yourself in learning with the goal of getting your foot in the door with a development career.

When I first got into the iOS development bootcamp I found it extremely hard! But I stuck with it and dedicated minimum 12 hour days 6 day/week.

Highly intensive bootcamp that requires 110% of one's attention for weeks. It was very exhausting but also worth every minute.

Pros:
- mentors - they were awesome and gave that extra to get over any problems
- career service - they are interested in your success so they do everything possible to prepare you for the job market
- curriculum - even though the it's impossible to learn everything in 2-3 months, their focus was to teach us learn quickly. I utilized this skill very much later on

Cons:
- the building was a bit war-torn but they moved to a new office since I attended

Lighthouse labs have a special effect on people. It takes what you knew as your limit, destroys it, and don't let you build a new one for a few weeks, not until you have learned everything they have to taught.

And all that with an imense support from the teachers, mentors, and staff.

I loved everything about this program. The teachers and mentors where amazing at breaking concepts down and gave me the confidence to start my career as a developer.

The course is definitely a challenge, but one I found exciting and even when I felt stuck there was always someone available to help out. The community around Lighthouse Labs has continued to be a motivating, empowering resource even five years out with their focus on continuing to support alumni education and development.

​If your willing to put in the work Lighthouse Labs is 1000% worth it. decision

Deciding to uproot myself and dive into a coding bootcamp with little to no prior knowledge about coding was definitely one of the most unnerving decisions I've made in my career. It meant leaving my current role in which I was comfortable in and diving into the unknown, but it paid off in the end! My old job lacked any major challenges, which I knew I desired to feel fulfilled in my career. I learned so many invaluable skills in the bootcamp and proved to myself that I was capable and could learn to program! It wasn't easy, but I'm so happy I decided to make that change in my life. Not only am I now working for a company that I absolutely love, but I am continuously learning and being challenged in my new role. For anyone looking to make that change in your life, you won't regret it!

Pros: I think the stack that was taught was very relevant and in-demand for the job market, especially React. Personally I would have preferred that they allocated the week spent learning Ruby on Rails on other Javascript technologies.

Cons: I think career services could have been improved... The majority of my peers from my cohort did not obtain employment through the school. The reality is that there are an abundance of bootcamp graduates entering the market and so it is difficult to stand out as an individual.

I went into this program with no coding experience and left fully prepared for my first job as a developer. The support during the program was first class and their career services team went above and beyond. Be prepared to work all day every day while in this bootcamp.

I graduated from the 10-week Web Development program in Calgary last week and it was an awesome experience.

The Bootcamp is structured with a lot of material for you to cover every day and stretch to work on if you already have some programming experience. You work on your own most of the day and watch lectures on a different programming topic daily. There are mentors available at all times (even weekends) in order to give you some insight when you get stuck, or just to be a rubber ducky haha! The mentors in Calgary were so good and patient with me as noob. Checking in after hours to see if I was okay and even stay up to 3 hours past paid working time in order to help me work through coding problems.

At the end of the day, you really get back what you put into it. I believe that ...

Great bootcamp with some excellent job support after graduating. Mentors and instructors vary in ability but the overall quality is quite high. Could benefit from shortening the remote week half way through as I felt it detracted from the experience but overall I would recommend Lighthouse Labs in the future!

I attended LHL in 2018. It was the most difficult but also rewarding experience of my life. The hours are tough and as you get tired and stressed out it's really important to pace yourself and take deep breaths.
I had some previous education in Web Development basics but bootcamp is a different experience. You are expected to work hard, learn fast and follow their curriculum and projects on time. If you are lucky like I was, you will find yourself in a great cohort group where everyone is supportive and eager to help.
I think LHL could improve their mentors/students ratio. There were stressful times when there weren't enough mentors while we were working on projects.
LHL Career Services was a bit of a disappointment. My cohort did not experience the Employer Speed Dating event ...

I recently just completed the 10-week Web Development program in Calgary and I had an amazing experience.

Our cohort was very social and we all helped each other get through it. Our mentors were very helpful -- they never gave us the answer but they always helped us to get on the right path to finding the solution. Our community manager always went above and beyond, from bringing us snacks, taking us to networking events, helping us find jobs and more. Plus our instructors were amazing, super funny and relative.

Lighthouse Labs definitely simulates the real world where you are thrown a problem and must tackle it head-on. They give you a solid foundation and teach you how to problem solve. This was probably one of the greatest academic settings I've been a part of. It's heavily f...

I read the bad reviews but thought they were outliers because there seem to be so many positive reviews on here. I joined Lighthouse in Toronto and was shocked at how awful this place was.

PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW CAREFULLY BEFORE PAYING $10K. I hope this review really helps make your decision. I wish someone had told me this before I paid 10K, quit my job and wasted both my time and money. When I was at the program, I felt that more than half of the students were NOT happy with their learning experience.

Curriculum: If you felt that you did not learn much from their prop course - QUIT and get your money back right away. Their poorly-written materials only get worse. Their original content was short and difficult to digest. Usually, they would give you links to random blog posts, ...

I am utterly disappointed with the experience. if you are seeking for Job placement then DO NOT even consider this as an option. Job support is a joke, once you are on the 9th week mark you are own your own. I am pretty sure the outcome report for their placements is flawed. Do not waste time and Money on this!

I have completed the bootcamp from LHL. I am not very satisfied with their speed and curriculum. This course can be very stressful and demotivating for those who are brand new to development or IT. First week is JS fundamentals which was good as I had the exposure from prep course. 2nd week was terrible as we need to learn Server, express, EJS with routes and everything in few days. The app is itself very complicated and poorly structured. Almost every student complained about this poorly structured app, but they never improved/changed this project. Week 3 is client side app which is bit relaxed in terms of work. 4th week is midterm app where you expected to work on one of a 7 given projects in which they expect you to make the project end to end in 4 days (including weekend). If you ar...

I would say that if you are new to coding, don't take the bootcamp. You are much better off using free resources to get started. As for the environment of LHL, I have talked about it with other 'students' and some definitely find the environment predatory towards those less knowledgeable. Half the mentors are good, half are awful. 'Management' there doesn't know how to properly communicate with students, even though they think they do. Also, if they think you aren't good enough, or taking the bootcamp lightly, they'll kick you out and take your money without giving you the chance to argue against it. As for career services, its a joke. the only way its helpful is the speed interviews, and demo day employers. But if you don't get lucky enough, or were too amateur at the time, forget it....

My entire life I struggled with school for various reasons - mostly I found it boring, and the teaching style didn't fit how my brain worked. After leaving high school Computer Science was definitely not in the cards, and I spent the next 15 years gathering life experience and a few different careers before coming back around to the world of coding. I tried to learn on my own for a while, discovered I did love it, but it was really tough to figure out how best to learn and what to do next to get to an actual place of being useful for a company - and how would I even put myself out there? A friend suggested I look into a bootcamp, and I did some research and decided on Lighthouse because they had a great reputation amongst people I know in the industry.
Man.
I can't say enough good t...

General Experience:
Coming into bootcamp, I was 100% ready to work hard. There has not been a single day where I have been bored, everyday we learned something new and we put it into practice. By week 3 I felt confident that I could easily build a simple app on my own. You really get what you put into it.

Mentorship:
All my mentors have been great, their knowledge and experience are very admirable. We have a pretty small cohort (4 people) so there has always been plenty of mentorship to go around for us, but there has been times in the beginning where I find myself waiting for a mentor. What I started doing, which helped a lot, is even though I have not run into problems I would sit behind a mentor and another student when they are troubleshooting so that I know how to handle that...

A great experience! The staff at Lighthouse Montreal are kind, generous, and always willing to help. They often staying past sheduled hours to assist the students, and constantly supportive of all our endevours. They strive to make the bootcamp a wonderful experience, taking note of student comments and concerns, and responding to any situation that a student may have a problem with. An excellent culture/enviroment has been developed by the staff.

They work constantly to find employer and oppurtunites in their career services, always trying to find what will fit for their students and the respective skills they have been taught. Allowing their students to network with all of the Lighthouse contacts and connect with companies interested in hiring junior developers. They do everything ...

I took a lighthouse labs Bootcamp last year.

I was excited at first because I wanted to change my career. I took another part-time course with them first to try out their classes and then decided to do the bootcamp.

In the interview, they suggested that I had a good chance of getting a job.

I really liked the fact that they advertised a “7:1 mentor ratio” and "96% of graduates hired" (the highest in Vancouver).

However, then I took the course and the mentor ratio was usually higher than 7:1. Most of the time, I had to wait hours for mentors to come and help me.

The fact they said that 96% of graduates hired was misleading to me. After many months of looking for a job, I couldn’t find a job and some of my ex-classmates had to complain to the school too. I decided to mak...