Lighthouse Labs

Your journey will begin when you attend the first call of their "rigid" interview process. The process itself is a group interview and a surprise assessment that tests your ability to solve problems. A 6th grader could pass this assessment. Then you're... Read More required to complete the fundamentals of any coding bootcamp which is between a 50-100 hour pre-bootcamp course. This course just teaches you the fundamentals similar to a FreeCodeCamp or CodeAcademy course. The truth is that the marketing behind LHL is the reason why they receive so many applicants and host cohorts over and over again. The course itself is not great. You're basically given a FreeCodeCamp or Udemy course that's been marketed as if it was a $15,000.00 program instead of a $15.00 program. You end up with a cookie cutter portfolio as the projects that you complete (aside from your mid-term and final) are identical to projects from the early 2010's. You can actually find the code to all of the projects online already. The mentors are just students that previously attended the course and can't find work (some actually want to teach). The video meetings for each class are useless. You learn nothing and every student is at a different spot in their journey for each class. You either attend it and ask a million questions because you're way ahead of everyone or you ask none because you're confused. Finally, you graduate. Your hand has been held throughout the entire process and you've passed every test and exam not because you learned enough to pass each but because they've willed you through the course to boost their numbers. The truth is that many students that are in this course should not be and that many students graduate and never become developers. I almost forgot to mention career services. You are now forced to purchase career services for over $3000.00 extra on top of your tuition. They do not know the industry and want you to apply to 3-5 jobs a week. If you take that route you'll be applying for the next 12 months. They have you look at everything through rose coloured glasses when in reality landing a development job is very hard. This is the most useless service that they offer and most of the time if they get you into a job its for a start up with less than 10 employees on a contract. Most of their recent students fail to land a job for 3-12 months and are forced to learn for 3-6 months and develop incredible projects and a portfolio to even begin receiving offers. Students don't graduate job ready. Most of the students that I know from my cohort are still actively looking for their first dev job and work at Starbucks or a local restaurant throughout the day. 1/5 stars.

The course and experience itself were great and felt that I had developed all the skills needed to land a junior developer job. My biggest gripe is that career services are pretty much useless and a huge cash grab. They give you very basic information... Read More that people should already know and the "network" they have is non-existent.

Lighthouse Labs is most definitely not meant for beginners. They throw you in right to the deep end with little explanation or instruction on mostly all of their Modules leaving you absolutely clueless during their prep with their useless prep forums... Read More full of Imposter Syndrome, Compass which is where you learn is constantly out of date leaving you to google on how to fix everything, they say google is your best friend yet they don't give you any useful tips on how to google anything properly I somewhat learned how due to the students in my cohort being awesome everything that was both useful and knowledgeable I learned is through them and not Compass because they weren't beginners and yet they had struggles too it's so frustrating because there were so many useful things and tools LHL could tell you about to use yet they don't. Their pages in both prep and main Compass are 10 feet long with 1 quintillion lines of text on them asking you to do a billion different things adding onto their lack of explanation and instruction leads you to get overwhelmed each time and you think going to a Mentor will help? While they're are a few good ones, good luck getting them through their ridiculous wait times and mentor to student ratio, they hire fresh clueless Jr Developers out of their course with zero job experience or teaching experience who just give you the answer and hang up mid sentence on you through Google Meets, they say leave reviews to help us i've left alot and they've gone no where. The instructors either have a thick accent you can't understand or a crappy microphone thats unbearable to listen to, they constantly use and have to be reminded of concepts that we haven't learned yet always making mistakes in "beginner code" we learned and expect you to understand technical terms on top of everything else you had to learn on day one. People are constantly deferring or dropping the full time and even the flex courses which proves their curriculum is simply put trash. They have you do a free Udacity course which on Udacity's website says takes two weeks to complete, Lighthouse Labs expects you to finish it in nine hours and thats all your Javascript Fundamentals, this is their whole curriculum they link you a page(s) to read (even wikipedia articles) which are often as long as their Compass Modules containing so many technical terms it's just so easy to get overwhelmed in then they give an explanation that makes no sense and have to do something with jack instruction, they leave you in tutorial hell with you just making your own methods through functions, at the same time teaching you Javascript, Command Line, Git, HTML and CSS all at the same time theres so much more I want to add to this but it's similar to how long some articles they link you are to so i'll stop and sorry this is kind of messy this is partially just my rant and a warning of LHL.

Even though they allow you to go in the web development bootcamp with minimal experience (ie. knows a tiny little bit of HTML, JS), don’t. This bootcamp is NOT meant for beginners. Don’t know about others but I’d say most of the time I had no idea what... Read More I was doing during the bootcamp. It was like trying to swallow without chewing. The quality of instructors and mentors varies greatly. I’d say overall, the Vancouver-based instructors/mentors were of much better quality than the rest. And yes, you do spend a few hours per day just waiting in the queue for a mentor. Often times you encounter apprentice mentors who are as clueless as you. The curriculum definitely needs an update. There was a week where you self-teach Ruby on Rails - no instructors giving lectures that week. This was a HUGE waste of time IMO. This week could have been used to let us learn more about React. Last but not least, the absurd “career service”, again the Vancouver-based ones seem to be more on the balls, the rest just make you think: what’s this person’s qualifications and why are they even hired? There is no accountability for their “career service” at all. No accountability for any other aspects really. Even though they constantly ask you to rate their curriculum, rate their instructors/mentors, NO IMPROVEMENT was being made anywhere. It was a huge waste of the already cramped bootcamp time. And by the time you get out of the bootcamp and get to the “career service” part, they don’t even bother to ask for your input anymore. If you were unfortunately someone who went in the bootcamp with very limited experience, the employment outcome is likely not gonna be pretty for you. And no one cares, they’ve already collected their paycheques.

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.