Lighthouse Labs

The entire website is filled with false advertising! There aren't enough mentors to help you. So even if you were proactive, seeking help, you are going to wait an hour or so on queue to get help. Once help does arrive, it's sourced from India, and they're... Read More unfortunately incompetent. When it comes to the work itself, everyone has the same projects. You won't stand out when it comes to employers. They will promise you the world and say whatever they have to say for you to sign up. Once you do, the course is very easy until week 6, where the contract states refunds are no longer permitted. That's when they simply leave you alone. Without any resources, help, or lectures even. The lectures themselves are very short and dry. Often unorganized and redundant. The lectures do not follow an organized and linear fashion when it comes to learning. Often times, you will go through a lecture and think to yourself, "I already learned this from a Compass (their self-teaching website), effectively wasting your time" Although the instructors and mentors (some) are trying, you can tell that they are somewhat tired and burnt out due to LHL's recent poor business decisions. The entire course is basically you self-teaching. Be warned. You will not be given as much attention as they promise. The website promises the world. Unfortunately, the entire thing is simply a cash-grab. Please avoid if you can. As for the curriculum itself, it's very outdated. They haven't changed it at all. Our current cohort, approx 200 of us (counting all cohorts over Canada) have been told that they will change the course content. I decided to reach out to former graduates, and it turns out they were told the same thing, unfortunately LHL changing the course content is a lie. They even have the audacity to link Wikipedia articles, instructing us to read the article, and calling it "course content". Furthermore, 200 students per regional cohort, that's many people. The market is currently over saturated with web dev boot camp students. Getting a job will be close to impossible. They claim their careers services will make it happen. Unfortunately, the career services were not worth it. They make promises that they simply cannot maintain. Their advice is often outdated, and easily Googled. Literally Google "resume advice" and you will get just as good, if not better, advice regarding your resume. Career services is basically non-tech, HR, Karens, ensuring that their customers (you) are happy with the services they provided. It's a complete joke. They're actually convincing some of their students that they can end up as software engineers, at a superb Fortune 500 company, by the end of this course. It's a complete joke. Their entire career services guidance is this: Make a good resume, Always code, Apply every single day, Know yourself (whatever that means), Be positive That's it. That's your $3,000 worth of careers service material. If you can't Google that now, you shouldn't be in this course as the entire course is based on Googling for help as the course and LHL won't provide genuine help. All this to say, avoid if you can. There are no reasons for anyone to use any services that they offer. Another reviewer argued that there will be job connections/networking opportunities. That's a lie. How could this legitimately be a thing? You have 200 students in your cohort. What's even sadder is that they have the audacity to claim a 95% hiring rate, meanwhile, they are hiring their own graduates as mentors, offering them minimum wage, and giving them part-time hours so that they can boast this number. To conclude, why would you be happy as a graduate of this boot camp when the mentors, instructors, former students, and current students are not happy with LHL? Upper management have screwed over staff and their students. Due to COVID-19, they unfortunately sold out, branched out into online education, which drastically decreased the course quality. Simply avoid and move on. Find another boot camp or better yet, teach yourself. Since that's what you will be doing anyway, like the rest of us LHL graduates. Many of us are doing what we should've done first, and buy courses online instead of dealing with LHL and their predatory business practices. Do yourself a favour, and avoid. Do not get buy into their presentations like the rest of us suckers.

Pro: • you learn pretty relevant stack • Cat is very nice and helpful where she can be Cons: • The mentorship throughout the course is not helpful, it is usually students who have recently graduated that lighthouse has asked to come back and work for... Read More 10hrs a week so that lighthouse can maintain their 85% hiring rate post bootcamp. This in itself is a scam. • career services will not help you. I was in Calgary and did not receive more than a 10 minute chat about my resume. I paid 3000$ for this conversation. We only had 1 advisor for Alberta and no one has even been able to get in contact with him • there are currently over 1000 people in the career services chat, to be one of a thousand feels useless • 1300$ is too much money, if you are doing this online anyways there are much better options • everything is online and you are not going to get the same value out of the course as anyone who did it pre-covid If you have any questions or concerns, either as a prospective student or a lighthouse employee (I doubt you guys would ever follow up on this) please don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn Lliam McBean

Very bad people and system. arrogant and rude employees do not waste your money there . no proficiency and a lot of rudeness when it comes to deal with students. non organized curriculum . no way to communicate and discuss their mistake (even if you could... Read More reach somebody to discuss they will refuse discussing their mistakes in addition to: no student support

Took the web development boot camp in 2019. 85% of the class had a bachelors in Comp Sci already, and was just there for the job connections. Learning environment was extremely toxic, with absolutely nobody asking questions. This is an extremely discouraging... Read More environment, with people often ridiculed for asking questions.

I did the full web development bootcamp in Victoria in 2018. It was a 10-week course at the time, but now I see they've increased the length, as they should. I struggled through much of the course but what is disappointing is I felt quite unsupported... Read More for most of the time. Victoria is a satellite location meaning we don't have teachers in-house but watch the lectures streamed from Vancouver. We were constantly being forgotten about by the teachers (they would start teaching without making sure we could hear, etc.). The teaching itself was very rushed. It was just watching a dude rapidly code for 2 hours. Needless to say, I didn't learn much from the lectures. The projects themselves were ok and they were very challenging, and while there are mentors there to help, the range of ability to help varied significantly. There were only 1 or 2 mentors out of about 6 that were knowledgeable and caring enough to sit down with you to work through something. I struggled and cried my way through. I am proud of myself for graduating from the program, but I felt grossly unprepared coming out of the program for any sort of developer job. LHL tells you you will feel like this, of course, but almost 2 years later, I still feel angry that the course was so rushed and I finished the course with huge gaps in my understanding. I am disappointed we were treated so poorly and not given more support. I am not quite sure where to go from here as I was not one of the people lucky enough to get a real developer job right out of the bootcamp, so I am out of practice and haven't built on anything we were taught. I desperately want to get a real developer job someday, but I am now grossly under-qualified for anything. I have resorted to going back to online courses to try to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, but it will take a long time to get my skills to where they should be to get a career in development. I feel like LHL took way too much money for what was offered to me at the time. I know they've improved some things since then, and I wish I could get a refund for the poor education I received in Victoria.

Pros
- Amazing career services. They truly want you to succeed and do everything in their power to bridge the gap between you and companies. Louisa and Lulwa are some of the most hard-working people I have ever encountered and I honestly would not have... Read More been hired if it were not for their support.
- The mentors here are mostly superb. I want to give a special shout-out to Karl who isn't even a mentor but was very supportive and engaging throughout the bootcamp. Tim, Mikias, Vasily, Rafal, James, Justin, Michael, Will, and Zola - thank you all so much for being understanding when I came to you with god-awful questions and for teaching me the intricacies of web development that went beyond the coursework.
- Course material is on average superb, covers the basics and more advanced topics pretty thoroughly. The tech interviews we had were very helpful for actual interviews as well. I really like that they focus more on 'teaching by doing' rather than having you read endless pages of docs / readings.
- The space is accessible by students 24/7 so we could stay as late as we wanted.

Cons
- The React weeks were not good. It needs an overhaul and I honestly learned more from Udemy courses than those two weeks. I love React and it was painful to see how mismanaged that section was. I believe they are looking to do a revamping of the course though in the near future.

Overall, I would unreservedly recommend this bootcamp to anyone who is seriously committed to a career switch. Don't look at the 93% hiring rate and be enticed though; attending this bootcamp is not like flipping a coin and getting hired 93% of the time. This bootcamp gives you some serious resources to succeed, but ultimately it is up to the individual to forge their own path. I suggest that potential applicants try out a course on Udemy to see if they can handle the work before applying.

Unrelated engineering background -> Unrelated job -> 3 month boot camp -> Job right after graduation.

The community is what makes this bootcamp worth it 100%.
Being around 20 other people in the same situation with the drive and motivation to succeed 10-12... Read More hours a day, 6 days a week, really ramps up your learning and motivation. I wouldn't have been able to have learned so much in so little time if it weren't for my peers.

The staff are all absolutely fantastic and wonderful people! The instructors and mentors (as of mid late 2019) are all exceptionally talented individuals who are passionate about teaching and helping new devs! (Shout out to Vasily, Mikias, Zola and Will for being the best mentors!)

The react part of curriculum is okay but could use a little love. Would recommend students to take a cheap udemy course on react or something similar to supplement their learning.

All in all a crazy, hectic and amazing 3 months that I would recommend to anyone seriously considering a career switch.

Best,
Really happy and satisfied Lighthouse Alumni

I came into the bootcamp with previous experience in Computer Science and some coding on the side. My main intent for joining Lighthouse was to learn more on Web Dev and find a job to switch industries.

The courses were alright but I feel that there should... Read More have been some more challenging material outside of the generic "stretch" material they have. Staff on hand to provide assistance ranged in ability but were overall quite good in their ability to transfer knowledge and help through problems.

The largest draw for me was the possibility to get introductions to companies hiring locally and this is where I felt the most let down by Lighthouse. I understand there was some staffing changes happening at that time but I feel like it was basically worthless. I ended up finding a position via another cohort member who referred it to me with the CEO at the company mentioning that Lighthouse had never presented me as one of the options available.

TLDR: Alright bootcamp, crappy job placement that feels like it might provide preferential treatment at the expense of some but some great people working there.

I was looking for a career change from mechanical engineering to software. Lighthouse Labs gave me the tools to get hired and be productive immediately. There is also a good alumni network and support for post graduation. I think it's the best choice... Read More for bootcamps in Vancouver

Good experience, LHL is pretty well respected in Victoria. Hard work, but you come out of it with a decent grasp on the material. I was one of the latest to get a job after ~3 months Job support was pretty weak. Got all my interviews myself. Was OK for... Read More resume review.