Confessions of a bootcamp graduate

Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11873537

Drop me an e-mail if you're considering one of these, I'll happily mentor people for significantly less than that, and I'm a full-time, active, multidisciplinary coder with 20+ years experience and background in both UX and visual design. And with enough industry contacts to almost certainly find you somewhere interesting to land afterwards.

I've taught classes at New York University and the School of Visual Arts and I'm almost certain I can get people spun up on the fundamentals of programming as well as any of these bootcamps. I also just enjoy that kind of one-on-one mentoring relationship.

(Sounds like a shill, but maybe my bigger point is that students might be better served by finding personal mentors to help learn this stuff rather than go through these expensive mills. Many accomplished coders would probably love to help out a protege.)

I'm confused. You posted this exact same post, with a different Medium link to the exact same story, a month ago. You've also been answering your own questions about negative reviews of Hack Reactor on Quora.

I can't help but feel you're holding some insane grudge against the program that you can't let go. Why is that? We're both alums from the same program, I got so much more out of it than what you're claiming was actually delivered in your post.

As someone actively trying to hire front-end developers I've come to see Hack Reactor as a red flag. Unless the candidate was selected as a tutor for the next batch I rarely let them past the resume screen.

I work with a co-worker who went through Hack Reactor, and the current job being her first in tech - she ended up alright, and learns at a pretty solid clip. On the flip side, at a previous employer, apparently there was an employee who went through Hack Reactor and was laid off just before I joined due to being an outright bad developer who had trouble getting basic work done.

I suspect that the quality of skills from people going through it is hit or miss. I personally think it probably is a raw deal for many, but some people need structure in their learning. I also think that it at least signals that the people care enough to invest that chunk of $ for a shot at a lucrative & well-rewarding career.

My first thought on $20k Bootcamp - anyone out there want to start a bootcamp??

Seriously, looking through the syllabus it is a lot to cover; and if you learn it well through their method (and if employers also believe in it) I can see it might be worth it. But I doubt it. It is a pretty big promise.

How do customers finance a twenty thousand dollars course?

Edit:

This [1] blog post loosely explains it. Pave, which is one of the "lenders" has the following terms:

$3,000 - $25,000 6.97% to 27.10% APR 2 - 3 Year Terms No Prepayment Penalty

[1] http://www.hackreactor.com/blog/partnerships-with-lenders-pa...

Now that tech hiring has slowed, it may be true that its moment has passed. But that doesn’t excuse many of the misleading points in this review.

“Hack Reactor was created in late 2012 by DevBootcamp grads.” This makes them sound like recent bootcamp grads. Shawn Drost studied CS at USC and was a technical team lead at OKCupid. Marcus Philips was an engineer at Twitter.

It describes (unfairly) the skeleton of the average day as if that’s all there is. There are frequently other lectures and guest speakers, and daily presentations and other discussions. There are also resources, assignments, and support before you even start the program, and support after.

“The students assigned to help during the sprints have graduated just before you started… Unfortunately they are not experts.” Their role is not to “give” anybody answers, but to get you unstuck. If you’re truly hopelessly stuck on something, then there are experts who step in.

“The third month you’ll work on your thesis project with a team chosen for you.” You have a lot of input over who you work with, and they accommodate switches when possible.

“The second half is cruise control.” That’s like saying a thesis semester is cruise control. You meet daily with an expert who functions as a PM. It was very comparable to real world programming.

The criticisms of the condensed nature of the program miss the point. They’re designed to make you autonomous and accustomed to agile practices, and not be someone who becomes easily lost with unfamiliar problems.

“Another observation, most people who get in, are already qualified people, with top university degrees.” This was certainly not true of the cohorts I saw or the people I interviewed when I did admissions for them. Roughly half had CS backgrounds, and the rest were changing careers.

A few candidates I interviewed attended previous bootcamps, and I saw no improvement over regular candidates. Most did not get in. With one exception, the alumni I know of (graduating 3-9 months ago) ended up in good jobs in line with their outcomes statistics. I don’t know if Hack Reactor is still worth it in today’s market, but painting the program as some kind of scam or bait-and-switch is not the sentiment of anyone I know, and this article makes a lot of dishonest points to get there.

If I'm a recent graduate (non CS major) and I have been learning JavaScript since last September.. should I join a bootcamp to become a frontend developer or is there a better path? I taught myself everything and now I use AngularJS and NodeJS. Half way trough a web app and will deploy it on Heroku to get some feedback. But I don't think I'm job ready yet since I don't know the best practices or how to write cleaner code. I thought about bootcamps, but people have very different views on them. I graduated from a top 10 business schools with latin honor. Took a few programming classes and really liked them. So I want to become a frontend developer even though I don't have a CS degree.

What should be my next steps? Or which bootcamp should I go for?

> Hack Reactor only teaches javascript. And a lot of veteran programmers, however wrong they might be, regard it as a lesser language

That's right, it's because they are "veterans" therefore old and don't know what's good so they still belive other languages might be needed to solve problems.

> These very people will now take up to 6 month to find a full stack job with this pseudo degree.

Is the "full stack" the new cool. Welp I guess I am a hopeless half-stack veteran.

Of maybe if they focused on half or third stack, they could manager a more in depth curriculum and provide more instructor-student one-on-one time.

Are there any good stories? It sounds to me like this is a scam to get money out of people, a step above Phoenix University and other such places.

Has anyone had any experience with coursera's nanodegree programs? I am thinking about their machine learning course. I'm worried it won't be super useful to me because I already have a master's in economics.

if there were a good way to keep people engaged, you could probably accomplish a lot through an apprenticeship/development program at a company. It isn't possible for the earliest stages of a startup (unless someone's doing one job well, while learning another), but for a more stable stage of the company, hiring someone smart/willing to learn and teaching him or her what's needed to do a job well would seem like a good return.

If you were in a place other than SFBA where people 1) wanted to live but 2) wouldn't easily go to other jobs locally, this could work really well.

There are good bootcamps and bad bootcamps. The best I've seen so far are Dev Bootcamp and Flatiron. They both have a ton of class time and teach both Ruby and JS.

I don't understand why someone would pay for one of these when there's free options like www.freecodecamp.com and www.theodinproject.com.

Wow that curriculum looks humongous for a 6 wk program.

Always check out the dev bootcamp reviews on Techendo first. http://schools.techendo.com/

sounds like those Udemy courses...which are really hit and miss

former hack reactor student here. glad the author wrote this. i do think hack reactor is an incredible learning experience if you can avoid the sweet sugary kool-aid that the entire bootcamp industry feeds people (probably out of the necessity for a crazy idea to be social-proofed).

but many people who go into these bootcamps, a bit naive about what it takes to gain deep technical expertise, either learn to gulp down the kool-aid (cultish) or bitterly reject it (jaded).

the third way (indifference towards the marketing) will probably lead to a stronger view of the industry itself, and will yield better programs + better mental model for those attending these programs.

hack reactor does an incredible job all things considered -- it takes BEGINNERS (which is different from entirely clueless "ive never coded before" types) and puts them on a path where, if they realize the depth of their ignorance, now have the tools to whittle away at it. they do this job much better than i think almost every bootcamp out there (based on extensive personal research)

bootcamps make these people employable, and considering many of these people are career switchers, that's pretty awesome for a 12-wk program. but we can't mistake "employable" with "good". the companies hiring bootcamp grads need to have the resources available to guide/mentor them. there are certain things bootcamp grads are great at, and others they are absolutely miserable at (see TripleByte's post: http://blog.triplebyte.com/bootcamps-vs-college)

my prediction is that the bootcamp industry is going to end up looking a lot like coursera writ large. you'll have "bootcamp prep" courses which, with another name, is just Intro to Web Programming. The next step up is the "web development bootcamp", which is Web Development 101. The next step up above that would maybe be different sets of intensives like "Python and Machine Learning" or a guided SICP/NandTetris course or Blockchain 101 or Functional Data Structures or something.

The idea being that in the grand scheme, if you are interested in programming and need structure, you can start with Codecademy, then attend a $1k bootcamp prep course, then attend a $5-20k online web dev course (depending on your goals), then a $5-20k deeper dive course (again, depending on your goals).

this path possibly lowers risk for people interested in programming -- at any stage of the path, you can drop out, and your time + $$ expenditure is lowered. the alternative is to pursue a CS degree and then realize halfway through you don't want it (at which point your stuck). or maybe it inspires you to go get a CS degree. or maybe inspires you to be ballsier and more self-directed and learn all this stuff yourself (which is tough but doable)