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.

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.

This is an effective program that will get you into the software engineering field. As a former teacher, I took action over the summer studying in June 2017, applying for acceptance through Oct 2017, and completing the program by the end of 2017. I stayed... Read More on as a TA for the program to better solidify my understanding of the bootcamp content. By May 2018, I had two offers and I switched into software engineering in less than 1 year. Keep in mind, none of this captures the first rejection into the program, the long hours studying, and the countless times you might want to throw a keyboard across the way. Those are all part of the experience and getting into software IMO, but you are well prepared as an effective software engineer when you exit Hack Reactor. The network of alumni is great, with people often able to refer other grads to companies, and the support as an alumni in job searching continues throughout alumni life.

Hack Reactor was unlike any education I've experienced: it teaches you autonomous learning and you still get support after graduating!

Hack Reactor provided the foundational work and community necessary to learn at a faster rate than before. When picking... Read More up a breadth of technical concepts in a short period of time, this is key!

The meta-skill of learning that will quickly outpace the utility of whatever library/technology you learn when you attend.

Post-graduation support! I've always gotten help from Marlene whenever transitioning roles. More than that, she knows and anticipates your needs on the job search. Whether it's connecting you for algorithm practice, finding the right warm intro to make, or giving you the right negotiation move, she is out to guide you for career success.

Consider how many offer letters she has helped secure and negotiate: she's becoming AlphaGo for job market/support.

I graduated from Hack Reactor in 2015 and have worked with the alumni team there -- most prominently Marlene -- for all of my job searches. They've been incredibly helpful with introducing me to partner companeis and helping coach me through the negotiation... Read More process.

Thanks to their guidance, I've been fortunate enough to negotiate up an extra ~50k during the four years that I've been working and know that I can always count on them to help out for my future job searches.

Nearly four years later, attending Hack Reactor has proven to be one of the best decisions I could have made for my career and personal life.  As time passes, I get to see the immense value of what the Hack Reactor community provides to its members and... Read More the marketplace of employers. I went to Hack Reactor to level-up in my software engineering career.  As a junior developer and someone that benefits from a classroom environment, it was the perfect springboard to understanding programming concepts that eluded me during my year and half of 'on-the-job' training. Upon graduating with a combination of industry experience,  technical training, and job search support, Side, Inc. hired me as one of its founding engineers.  Within three and a half years, the company grew from four to nearly 125 people; from barely seed-funded, to well-funded series C. Fast-forward nearly four years.  I hadn't interviewed. I am back on the job market for the first time since I graduated.   I let my interviewing skills and algorithm design skills atrophy.   I had been all in on the startup life and didn't invest time in my ability to re-enter the job market. I scarcely even updated my résume.  I didn't notice that I was making progress on developing an application for a company without at the same time keeping my tools sharp. The time came to find another job.  Frankly, it was daunting.  It was at this moment that I called on my Hack Reactor network.  I reached out to cohort-mates, but more importantly, I reached out to the Alumni network through the Alumni director, Marlene Tang.  She was by far the most supportive resource available to get oriented in the job search.  I was able to reconnect with fellow grads who had recently returned to the job market.  I was even able to receive mentorship from another grad to help me with algorithms and whiteboarding, a skill which feels like it had all but disappeared. I received in-network leads of opportunities for which I could apply.  The Alumni director had a keen sense of who was where and could essentially facilitate matchmaking with companies that were looking. In the end, I found a new opportunity that really is a dream job.  It so happens that it turned out to be one of the companies where another Hack Reactor grad was working.  I can't tell you how grateful I am for the ongoing perks of being part of the Hack Reactor community.  This next move is a big step in my career, unlocking doors to tracks that didn't exist before. Interviewing is grueling, even if you are experienced and well-connected.  The interviewing process for engineers involves all sorts of assessments.  There are short, automated, timed coding challenges.  I have experienced technical trivia questionnaire and odd thought experiments.  I have spent hours on takehomes; I have devoted days to multi-session technical interviews; it is as though the list goes on.  It is tiring and discouraging.  I cannot overstate the privilege of having a support system like the Hack Reactor Alumni Network, and being able to work with someone like Marlene. This relationship I invested in four years ago has made all the difference for me. The success I have experienced is in no small part due to the support of a fantastic community, led by a passionate, competent leader, Marlene Tang.  Thank you, Hack Reactor. Thank you, fellow grads, for being awesome people and making the community what it is.