
Confessions of a $20K bootcamp graduate - makinori
https://medium.com/@norimaki/confessions-of-a-bootcamp-graduate-hack-reactor-f921c441fb23#.63ynk0unv
======
aczerepinski
Flatiron School was nothing like this. We had long lectures every day by a
great senior-level dev, and then review sessions with recent grads later in
the day. It was a really polished curriculum, and a great environment to work
hard in. $20k is indeed expensive, but it's only money. I used to do something
I didn't love for a living and now I get to write code. Life is short. I'm
thankful bootcamps exist and there was a path for me to transition into a
challenging, engaging career.

I've been out for almost a year now. I hope they're still keeping the
standards high.

~~~
gk1
> "$20k is indeed expensive, but it's only money."

That is a _very_ substantial amount of cash for most people. Not to mention
the time commitment. (As you say, life is short.)

~~~
seangrogg
Eh, much cheaper than a $40,000 4-year commitment (from a public university,
assuming $5,000 semesters - which is _very_ lenient).

~~~
gk1
That's been brought up a few times in this thread. I don't think it's a fair
comparison at all. You can borrow student loans for college, but the $20k
comes out of pocket.

~~~
aczerepinski
Most bootcamp students already have college degrees. Many have families and
mortgages, etc. Dropping from the workforce for four years to do another
college degree isn't a realistic option. Tuition isn't the biggest cost of
education at a certain point in life; lost wages is.

~~~
dragonwriter
A second bachelor's is unlikely to take four years of full-time work; e.g.,
Oregon State's online second bachelor's in CS is a 1-year full time program.

~~~
aczerepinski
That's cool and an option I didn't know about. Still, an entire year of lost
wages is way more expensive than a bootcamp. I couldn't have made that work.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Still, an entire year of lost wages is way more expensive than a bootcamp.

Plenty of people do online programs nearly equivalent to full-time (with loads
like that of the 1.5-year track for the OSU second bachelor's, which is also
available on 2-, 3-, and 4-year tracks with lower impacts, though longer
terms) _with_ full-time jobs _and_ families, some even do full-time programs
(like the 1-year track) that way. People that need to learn around an existing
job and often family commitments are pretty much the core market for distance
education.

That's not to say bootcamps don't have their place, but the idea that there is
no other option for people who want to become programmers and can't afford to
take a lot of time off of their existing job is just wrong.

------
49531
Honestly I feel like the golden age of bootcamps is coming to an end. A lot of
schools jumped into the market and it just seems like quality is dropping.

Having worked at a bootcamp as an instructor and having hired multiple
bootcamp grads I've noticed that typically you'll have 2 or 3 really great
students and then 20 who got little value from the program. Bootcamps work
wonders for that small percentage of students though. A lot of people who had
some pretty shitty career paths ended up going from $12.00/hr to $100,00/yr
within a few years of the program.

That's life changing; sadly it's the exception, not the rule.

~~~
paulmd
I didn't have any ability to follow my students' earnings but that '2-3 really
great students per class' also correlates with my experience TA'ing CS110
students.

~~~
flangloria
Exactly. I feel this is being overlooked a lot.

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rm999
I hire data scientists, my experience interviewing through a boot camp for a
year: the top 1-2 students in each class are great, the remaining 10-15 are
anywhere from under-qualified to woefully unqualified. The one guy I hired
from the bootcamp, easily the highest quality applicant from three classes we
evaluated, told me he learned essentially nothing. He told me his teachers had
no real qualifications or work experience. The students are charged 15K for 6
weeks, about the same amount I spent on my entire masters. We were charged 10K
to hire him.

Bootcamps are a good idea in theory, but the execution makes it clear most of
them are cash grabs and part of a disturbing culture in this country to
massively profit off post secondary school education (at the expense of the
students).

~~~
thaumasiotes
> The students are charged 15K for 6 weeks, about the same amount I spent on
> my entire masters.

Assuming you're going for a job, paying $X to get a job in six weeks sounds
like much _better_ value than paying $X to get a job in two years.

~~~
yompers888
I think parent comment is suggesting a greater value because 15k bought him a
whole year or two of supervised self-improvement, whereas it lasts only 6
weeks in the boot camp environment.

~~~
rm999
Yes exactly. I only brought up the money to transition to my rant about how I
think bootcamps are a cash grab :)

I also think thaumasiotes is missing my overarching point, which is that the
data science bootcamps didn't actually provide much value to their students.

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jtchang
This is a great post and more of these are surely needed. I think the reason
we don't see many graduates speaking out is because they feel it might "de-
value" their degree which I totally understand.

However the lack of transparency with bootcamps is frightening. Especially
regarding how much they charge. I'm not saying all of them are bad. In fact I
think it is refreshing to that so many bootcamps popped up since now you have
a lot of options. However there doesn't seem to be a lot of price warring yet
which I find kind of odd.

~~~
seangrogg
The weird thing is that the "price warring" that does go on seems very
dramatic - there are plenty of bootcamps that are effectively "free". That
being said, they often don't get rave reviews (nor do they seem to have much
marketing going for them).

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just_aint_right
I went to a bootcamp in 2014. I think it was detrimental. I came out of it
depressed and wholly unequipped for the roles their marketing suggested I'd be
ready for.

I don't recommend them.

------
daxfohl
As an employer I'd look at bootcamp participation as a sign that the applicant
doesn't know how to program. Just like all of Sun's nee Oracle's and MS's
(well, _and_ Oracle's) cert programs 15 years ago.

If you truly don't know how to program but want a coding job, then here's a $0
class. Start with JavaScript. Why? The entire internet is based on JavaScript,
it can do anything, it runs on any OS, and it's easy to learn.

Google how to write a "hello world" web server program in node.js. (js stands
for JavaScript. node.js is the most popular way to write web server in
JavaScript). Follow that tutorial through.

Next, update it to make it tell the current time, updating once per second.
Make a client-side and a server-side version of the app. Client-side means
your code is in the HTML page and gets executed by the browser. Server-side
means the code is on the web server, and your browser pings the server once
per second for the correct time. Server-side is a bit more complex. Google is
your friend in this. stackoverflow.com is a great community and resource to
learn from (but search for existing answers before asking questions!).

Next step is to find a TodoMVC tutorial (google again) in node.js, follow it
through, and publish to heroku. You probably want to google "node.js todomvc
heroku tutorial". (I didn't but I'm sure something would turn up). This will
teach you about databases, version control (specifically "git"), hosting, and
deployment. At the end of the day you'll have fully functional web app that
anyone can use just by knowing the URL! Really once you've worked through
that, or, once you're able to do it from scratch without googling much, you're
a coder. Rejoice.

At that point put your TodoMVC code on github (google again, but the place
people share code via "the git"), and start mucking with it. Whatever suits
your fancy: if you're into UX then spend time making the UX cleaner. If you're
into databases or programming languages, adapt to different ones. If you're
into performance, then blaze that path. Or if you're just not into todo lists,
then use your newfound knowledge to start a project WRT something you do like.

Final step, ping potential employers and show off your github account. You'll
certainly get a look from SMB owners who are looking for people with some
intrinsic motivation. You'll put people who subcontract their drive to
bootcamp programs to shame.

~~~
CloudYeller
Given the volume of applicants you have to sift through, I don't blame you for
generalizing that "bootcamp == noob".

I know several people who had a CS degree and/or had been working as actual
"Software Engineer"s for fairly reputable companies before attending a
bootcamp. For people like this, there are several reasons to attend:

1) The same kind of reason why people do MBA's: you get a mental break, in
that you do something very different than what you're used to doing, and then
probably get to work in a more desirable city/company.

2) To learn things that were not taught in a CS program. At least as of 3-4
years ago, most CS programs did not teach you any kind of web development-- if
you're lucky, there was a class on the LAMP stack, or you could do an
independent project using whatever stack you wanted. Otherwise it was Java/C++
for data structures & algorithms. Going from that, to webapp development, can
leave you feeling like you have no idea what you're doing. Especially if your
coworkers aren't nice enough to help you out.

3) To meet technical cofounders. It sounds like nowadays some programs are
basically letting in anyone with a heartbeat, but a few years ago at least,
before bootcamps became "cool" or whatever, they attracted highly motivated
risk-takers, many of whom had prior programming experience.

~~~
daxfohl
Agreed. Everything in perspective.

------
devonharvey
I attended Hack Reactor last summer. The teaching style she describes was
incredibly effective for me, and I couldn't have been happier with my
experience there. It doesn't take long to pay off $18k when you get a huge
raise.

------
seangrogg
Eh, I had a much better experience. But I don't chalk up my success to HR's
curriculum nearly as much as I do the people (though getting exposure to
Node.js has been a huge aspect of my life).

If you're going to any bootcamp/immersive and you're going for the curriculum
all you're going to get out of it is the curriculum - which you could easily
obtain from freecodecamp.com for... well... free. If you're going to go, you
should be going for the people - your sprint partners, thesis groups, beer
buddies, outcomes teams, tech leads, alumni network... that's what lasts
_after_ Hack Reactor and it yields dividends well beyond the (admittedly
striking) sticker price.

~~~
nbclark
Part of my concern with bootcamps is the sentiment expressed above that you
need it to get exposure to some arbitrary technology. In my experience, the
best indicator to success in an industry or technology is a desire to learn
that technology. Not someone giving exposure. I a happy it is working out for
you, but as Node falls out of fashion, it will be on you to learn the next
wave.

~~~
seangrogg
I hate when people make the assumption that learning JavaScript is somehow a
limiting factor. It hasn't stopped me from picking up Java, Ruby, Python, or
PHP. I still have some trouble with Go structs and I still have some learning
to do on Rust lifetimes... but seriously.

What "next wave" of server application development does Node.js leave me so
woefully unprepared to deal with? Are people really having issues marshalling
JSON/XML or sending templates down the wire?

~~~
nbclark
Was not my intention to imply javascript was a limiting factor. Nor that web
frameworks for python, java, ruby, etc. are all that different. My comment was
simply challenging the thought that a bootcamp is necessary for being exposed
to technology. There are plenty of free resources online from which to learn.
If a bootcamp helps jumpstart that, great. But picking up the next framework
(while similar) will require diving in on your own.

------
matt_wulfeck
The money is always in selling the shovel, not digging.

------
MattyRad
$20,000 is about half of what my 4 year college education cost (although it's
more expensive now, certainly). That seems incredibly expensive for a
bootcamp. I'm obliged to ask what on earth that money is going towards,
besides directly into somebody's pockets.

> Another observation, most people who get in, are already qualified people,
> with top university degrees.

I'm afraid to ask how large their student loans could be, this bootcamp
included.

~~~
ryanSrich
When did you graduate? Between 2009 and 2013 my college cost was roughly $40k
per year. This was about the average for similar schools (RIT). My wife went
to a small liberal arts school during the same time and spent roughly $50k per
year.

$20k seems like an incredible bargain, but my view is probably warped.

~~~
MattyRad
2009-2013 as well, (accredited) state school (of which I am a resident), cost
me a little less than $10,000 per year for a Computer Engineering degree.
However, my junior year, engineering classes level 300 and above increased by
25%, continually increasing per year until they were 100% more expensive. I
narrowly dodged that bullet.

Perhaps the west coast is cheaper? $50,000 per year seems like lunacy to me.

------
smt88
Thank you for sharing this. There needs to be a better system for bootcamp
shoppers, but until then, these kinds of posts will probably save others lots
of money.

~~~
ChuckFrank
I agree.

------
dan-b
Drills, close quarters, hard work sounds like boot camp. App academy changed
my life. "Anyone who tries for 6 months can get a job" really? You think that
education is expensive? How much did you spend at college, and what job were
you qualified for after that?

------
hoodoof
This post reads like the author holds the school responsible for the students
success. Programming does not work that way. You MUST make yourself
successful. Even giving a minutes thought to a schools "result stats" entirely
misses the point.

Taking this to the next level, I don't think people should be paying to go to
any sort of coding school. Spend the money on a second monitor and living
expenses and sit at home and work on building something real. There is no
better, quicker or more effective way to learn, and every bit of knowledge
that you need is published on the Internet for free.

Stop learning, start doing.

~~~
shoemai
I think this is a popular opinion that's just not realistic. There is a >0% of
the population (much greater IMO) that is more productive learning in a
structured environment. For those people there is an amount >0$ that they
would be willing to pay for that structured environment. To say otherwise is
basically just a glib, "Well I did it so why can't you?"

~~~
hoodoof
There is no "structured environment" when you get a job in programming. You
are given goals and you need to get the result through learning and problem
solving and just trying to make the damn thing work.

If the only context in which a person is capable of operating is one in which
they are "taught" then they aren't suited to programming.

You have to do it on your own eventually so many as well get started on the
task of becoming good at that.

------
jstnjosepht
I had a good experience at MakerSqaure. I wouldn't disagree with some of the
points brought up - at certain times the work is more solo-based and I too
wondered what the instructors were being paid for. The "best practices" point
is something that could definitely be more emphasized from a curriculum
standpoint. This is kinda tricky when talking about React (for example) as
best practices in a lot of ways are still being adopted.

In my case, the outcomes have been good (graduated earlier this year and make
$20k more than my previous job) but I would agree that it's been an uphill
battle getting an interview and negotiating salaries when there are more
junior developers in the market. (HR/MKS markets grads as being more as "mid
level" which is accurate for some - but it really is a spectrum.)

Overall I recommend these programs to people who are passionate about the
field - but a lot might be motivated to attend for the wrong reasons.

------
shawndrost
(I'm a cofounder at Hack Reactor.)

It's always a bummer when an alum would not recommend the program. I hate
reading posts like this and I'd love to buy the poster a beer and learn more
so we can do it different next time. (Email is in profile!)

Here's a bit of inside baseball:

This post is representative of a troubled period at our school. We had a
couple of overlapping key problems and recent alums have been less supportive
of the school. We care and we've made big moves to fix it. 1) Candidates were
gaming the admissions process -> we rewrote it. 2) Students only had access to
2014 data and didn't know how it was calculated -> we published our 2015 data
(and some stuff on 2016) and we published the world's first guide to "how to
publish employment statistics that aren't bullshit", and we ramped up
messaging to students "expect that your job search might be harder".[A] 3)
Students stopped knowing who we were and stopped feeling like they could trust
us -> we bought back two leaders to focus full-time on the campus (vs working
at the umbrella organization). Lots of smaller changes as well.

Even during this difficult period, students are generally having a great
experience and getting an ROI that we are proud of. Our most recent NPS
measurements have all been above 80, which is bonkers. (This means that nearly
everyone is a 9 or a 10 on a 1-10 scale of "how likely are you to recommend HR
to a friend?")

There are a lot of details in this post that I don't disagree with. Eg
"Ironically the number of lectures drops dramatically after the first week."
This is true and we tell students about it during w1. It's the correct design
decision. Etc. For other students, those same details have added up to a
different gestalt. We care and we try to fix things when things aren't adding
up. The diagnosis is not linear (you can't just fix the problems that alums
cite) but we listen and try to sort out the right decisions.

I empathize with a lot of things going on and I want recent alums to know we
care. I also think it's bonkers that our 98% placement rate in 2015 (94% in 3
months, ~85%ish in 3 months for one recent cohort) is being cited like it's
weak sauce. That's a towering accomplishment of staggering magnitude in my
books, and we charge $20k because the median student gets a ~$50k raise and we
employ lots of staff to make that happen.

<3, Shawn

[A] [http://www.hackreactor.com/student-
outcomes](http://www.hackreactor.com/student-outcomes),
[http://reactorcore.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/StandardSt...](http://reactorcore.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/StandardStudentOutcomeMethodology.pdf)

~~~
analognoise
"we charge $20k because the median student gets a ~$50k raise"

Horseshit alert if I've ever heard one.

~~~
seangrogg
Yeah, my raise was more along the lines of $140k. But I went from Shift Lead
Walgreens to contract Web Developer at Google, so... there's that.

~~~
jayzalowitz
Yeah, im gonna call bullshit on this one too.

You got into google because google actively recruits military vets, not
because of the bootcamp experience, which might have helped get you over the
hump, but unlikely caused it.

It took you 3 years between shift lead and google.

~your lovely neighborhood ex-people search engine founder.

P.S. thank you for your navy service (in all seriousness)

~~~
seangrogg
Google doesn't care about veteran status when it comes to their contracted
employees as that pool comes from the ranks of the staffing agencies.

As far as the 3 years since Walgreens goes... \- 1 year spent in college for
CS before dropping out \- 1 year spent self-teaching and working for a startup
where I learned what "jQuery" and "AJAX" and "PHP" did =p \- 3 months Hack
Reactor \- 6 months contract with Intel \- currently at Google

------
sixtypoundhound
Ouch! As a hiring manager, the "Javascript only" model is a serious roadblock.

Nothing against node.js, but a candidate would be marketable to a broader
range of shops if the program gave them a basic grounding in Python and SQL.
Python is well accepted for both web servers and sysadmin type scripting. SQL
is the most common choice for databases. I don't think either one would be a
incremental burden and would really open up the number of potential employers
for the grads.

~~~
seangrogg
Out of curiosity, what kind of scripts can you write in Python that you cannot
in Node.js?

Don't get me wrong, Python is great and has a number of really great number
crunching libraries just a pip away, but if all you're doing is developing web
apps and hashing out some scripts via the terminal... they'll need to know
JavaScript for the client - but do they really need to come away with two
languages after 3 months?

------
markbnj
Ugh, how could anyone hope to teach programming by beginning with "Data
Modeling and Classes?" That stuff only becomes interesting after you've become
enthralled by getting the computer to do stuff.

~~~
rdiddly
I thought the same thing - weird way to start off.

------
flangloria
This maybe a bit off topic, but hopefully someone can provide some insight.

Do Udacity nanodegrees fall under the same category as these bootcamps? What
is the quality one can expect there?

------
mageemooney
Full disclosure: I am part of the instruction team at Hack Reactor. This
amazing team that I work with are completely committed to our students, their
experience and their success. I have colleagues who almost don't go home, who
work weekends, obsess over how to help our students succeed. We lose sleep. We
worry. Truth is, I find the tone of this article dismaying knowing what these
remarkable people do for our students and knowing how successful most of those
students go on to be.

Shawn responds with some details about recent changes we had to make to
address, among other things, applicants figuring out how to game our
admissions. For a few cycles there were notably more students than usual who
struggled with the program, not getting out of it what other students do and
who subsequently struggled in the job search. That placed a huge demand on
instructional resources which has impact throughout the student body.

Whether those students got in by deliberate exploitation of vulnerabilities in
our process (some did) or earnestly researching what HR wants and studying "to
the exam" is immaterial -- they entered unprepared for the program.
Regardless, they received the same world-class curriculum as our phenomenally
successful students. I don't believe it's coincidental that the most
vindictive account of a student's experience at Hack Reactor came hot on the
heels of that challenging period in our history.

I do want to address a few assertions that were made that suggest a deliberate
attempt to mislead readers. The Hackers In Residence are not Instructors at
Hack Reactor. They aren't represented as such. HIR's are not intended to be
experts in technology nor to provide answers to all possible questions the
current students provide. Any instruction they provide is either ad-hoc
coaching, whiteboarding collaboration, in the form of brown bag talks they
offer or by presenting toy problem solutions in the morning.

What they are is a group of very gifted and empathetic engineers who are
sharing their talents with other students, coaching them through problem
solving, providing first line Help Desk support, pitching in on other efforts
at the school while they continue their own studies beyond the scope of our
curriculum. They are among our brightest students who choose not to go
immediately into the job market where they can command impressive salaries but
rather stay to learn and study more and to support other students. They're
fabulous, talented people.

More specifically, HIR's are recent grads who understand the experience of the
current students and who know from direct recent experience the kinds of
support they found most helpful or most hoped for and seek to provide that
support to students. Questions that are beyond the scope of their
understanding are escalated to engineers (like me) on the Instruction Team.
They are an additional set of eyes and ears that allow me to even more insight
into the experience of my current students than I can gain on my own.

As to the lectures and the difference between the first half and the second
half of the program. The curriculum is very specifically designed to develop
autonomous engineers. It is WHY our grads are successful. They don't excel in
the workplace IN SPITE OF that structure. We guide them more early in the
program where they need more support and very consciously, over time, reduce
the hand-holding in favor of their own discovery and collaborating with
classmates to learn. Mentors and Lecturers continue to provide support and
instruction as needed during the latter half of the program.

With respect to languages. Many schools teach more than one language. Not many
schools prepare engineers as well as we do. Hack Reactor is not a Javascript
school. We use Javascript as a context to teach software engineering. Our
students often tackle new languages on their own in the second half because
they are well-prepared and appropriately autonomous. We've had students and
student teams use Swift, Python, Ruby on Rails, Rust, Processing, dabble in
IoT, ... And HIRs tackle Scala, Haskell, and more. That's not in spite of the
program, that's because of the program..

I understand that a critical reader will have to take my response with a grain
of salt but I think it's reasonable to ask readers of the Medium article to do
their own research and contact alums for direct feedback before drawing
conclusions.

~~~
yompers888
>"...the most vindictive account of a student's experience at Hack Reactor
..."

You give yourself so much benefit of the doubt, but offer none to the author,
who you've decided is out to get Hack Reactor? That one swipe at the former
student is more concerning than the rest of your comment is reassuring, to me.

An alternative reading of the situation, if you're not seeing one: the author
has attempted to better herself by one common approach in the programming
world, and having a bad experience, she is sending a warning back to others
who are seeking the same improvement, telling us, 'this may be the wrong
direction.'

~~~
mageemooney
I do not represent the school, I speak only for myself and believe it's
reasonable for me to express an opinion as someone who believes in and works
hard for our school and our students. Further, 1) I am not tone deaf. The
author's disdain was thinly veiled and their accounting was full of
exaggerations and inaccuracies. This wasn't a simple sharing of how they
program works and how it didn't meet their needs. It also raises concerns
because I am dismayed that they apparently didn't raise any reasonable
concerns they may have had during the program when I and my colleagues were in
a position to improve their experience or they would have reported it
differently here. Why do you suppose they wouldn't give us that opportunity to
make their experience more fruitful given their investment? Constant iteration
and openness to feedback is a regular mantra around HR. I wonder (reasonably)
if there isn't something else going on here than they report. And 2) I sought
to share another perspective. I provided full disclosure about my role in the
first sentence, highlighted some specific skewed observations made by the
author and encouraged readers to investigate for themselves.

Seems reasonable to me.

