Hack Reactor - Austin, Texas

Rachel M.

Best educational experience of my life. In one year I was able to completely turn my life around and land a high paying job in a completely new field, thanks to the skills I acquired through Hack Reactor. The immersive is only 3 months, but you spend at least 3 months preparing and maybe another 3 months afterwards practicing and making your own projects. The remaining 3 months might be dedicated to full time job searching until you finally land a job, and that's pretty standard (3-6 months of job searching). If you are able to afford a full year of not being employed to focus on your software engineering career switch, then you can rapidly go from no coding experience to a mid level engineer.

Grant R.

I'd like to preface this review with this: If you are not ready to work and give a school 110%, MakerSquare might not be the place for you. Though it is only 3 months, It definitely takes a lot out of you. But what you get in return is much more than I could have ever imagined.

The staff was amazing. So many resources there to help you in constructive ways. Instead of giving flat answers, they worked with you until you would came up with the correct logic to the puzzle.

One of the toughest challenges in learning any programming language is getting passed the basics. Learning where and how to take that next step can take years. At MakerSquare, within a month I was learning advanced concepts, bleeding edge frameworks and technologies, and solving complex algorithms on a daily basis.

Upon completion of the program, I felt very prepared in every aspect for my future career as a Software Developer. Not only did I have the required technical and interview skills, but I learned how to properly work in a team to develop dynamic applications.

I was able to land an amazing job within about a month of graduating the course. It was the best career move I could have ever made.

10/10 would learn JavaScript again

Caren G.

I took the Part Time Front End course at MakerSquare and absolutely loved it! The instructors are fantastic, knowledgeable and supportive! As a complete beginner I was really encouraged and empowered to learn more about the varied topics handled in the course! Not to mention that all my classmates were incredibly motivated and overall great friends!

Having a solid understanding of the different aspects of the world of Front End web development, do I have the confidence on working on and creating my own projects! There's still much to learn, but Maker Square provides us with a solid base of knowledge paired with great instructors and a great environment to be in! Highly recommend MKS to any wanting to learn!

Doris C.

I had chosen Hack Reactor (Makersquare at the time I was introduced to it) after hearing about it through at least two of my friends in the Software Industry. I had originally considered getting a degree from a university and was working towards that at a community college. But when I heard about this program and it's amazing reputation in the industry, I decided to go this route. By the time I enrolled at HR, I had taken an Introduction to Programming course (coded in Python) at a community college to see if I like programming before committing. The knowledge I gained from the course helped me through the prep and the first week or two of the programming, after that it was an unfamiliar, challenging but exciting territory.

Hack Reactor is great for learning programming and about yourself as an individual. This intensive 12-week program is great for those that are able to pick up things after doing the hands-on learning for 2 days and then pivot to another concept afterward. Although this type of learning style may take some adjusting on your part, after this section (first six weeks) is over, you will have a pretty good idea about how you learn as a student and how much research/practice you as an individual needs in order to understand a concept or new technology. Moving into the second half of the program, you'll be put into teams of 3-5 to work on building apps. Here, you're able to work on teamwork skills such as communication, organization, accountability, and problem solving as a group. You'll learn how to balance each team member's style of work and personality as you're going through this process.

Overall, my experience at Hack Reactor was amazing and I would definitely recommend it for prospective students!

Christian C.

I graduated from MakerSquare back in 2014. Not to be overly dramatic, but it was a transformative experience full of incredible people. I have no regrets investing in my education with MakerSquare, since it brought me to the awesome career I have today. Of course to get there, require 110% dedication and lots of struggle and hard work.

Here's why MakerSquare was stellar:
- MakerSquare cares about your success. Their hiring network is great and vast. Career staff is on point, and there to support you on this rough journey to your first coding gig. My first job after graduating, the company had a former MakerSquare instructor on my team and learned a ton from him and the team there. A few months after that, we hired 2 more MakerSquare grads and they were great team members. I imagine I'll just have more and more opportunities to bump into MakerSquare alumni in my future which is is nice.
- Amazing classmates. Of course, your experience may vary, but I absolutely loved my cohort. We grew very close and now fast forward almost 2 years later and we still stay in touch. I'm constantly amazed by my peers and where they have ended up in their careers. And I'll mention that many of them continue learning and improving their craft. I think this is a testament to the commitment of students that MakerSquare brings in. I recall one of the mentors said "It's not about whether you can code, because anybody can learn how to code. But it's whether you will stick with coding or not." All of my cohort still passionate about coding are slaying it at their careers.
- Good on selecting students that are committed to code journey. I was surrounded by peers who were willing to put in effort around the clock. This is important because even just one person who is not committed could bring a group's learning down. And choosing students who are not collaborative and willing to help each other learn also can bring down that dynamic.
- Constantly iterating and improving the program. Which mirrors the super fast pace in the industry. This is SUPER important because it's the only way to stay relevant and ensure students get placed in the appropriate jobs the industry demands. For example, my cohort in 2014 learned Ruby/Rails+JS, and now it's 100% JS. And in just the last year and half, I see the job landscape changing (I'm always curious about the jobs out there). So it's really nice to see MakerSquare constantly evolving the program to match what the industry needs.
- Curriculum focuses on coding. That's like a big "duh" but the instructors understand that constant hands-on coding is the way to learn. Instructors are highly invested in the students learning and success, and were super helpful and encouraging. I won't mention details of what the curriculum was since it will naturally evolve (see my previous point).

MakerSquare is a phenomenal program, but is not for the faint of heart. It requires 100% commitment, not just for three months, but for the next chapter of your career. Those who are serious about changing their career to something more fulfilling, I say go for it.

Daniel S.

My experience with MakerSquare was enormously positive, and I'd recommend it to anyone with a genuine commitment to pursuing software engineering as a career.

I was reasonably well-established in my previous career in sales before attending MakerSquare, and I'd like to think I did my due-diligence in terms of researching outcomes and comparison-shopping with similar programs - I even went all the way through the admissions process with one of the others. I chose MakerSquare because it seemed like the most rigorous, and I wasn't disappointed. I showed the pre-course work to a friend who'd attended another program, and she was blown away by the depth of knowledge we were required to have just going in.

The curriculum was well-designed, and it included a lot of fundamental CS topics that I've heard employers express concern about when discussing boot-camp candidates - in fact, most of the topics that seemed at all abstract or esoteric came up in interviews during my job search. I think in that way, MakerSquare responds very well to the market conditions for its graduates.

The program is loosely divided into the a curriculum phase and a project phase, and the curriculum phase wisely avoids delving too deeply into the hot modern frameworks (though when I attended, it included Backbone, and a quick introduction to Angular at the end). The project phase gave us broad latitude to select and learn the technologies we thought would be most relevant, and ultimately the ones we thought would look best on a resume.

MakerSquare also provided a great deal of guidance during the job search, which I was grateful for. I ended up with three offers on the table, and I couldn't be happier in my new job as an engineer. MakerSquare suggests budgeting for a 3-month job search, and all of my cohort-mates that I've kept in touch had jobs within that time frame.

My only criticism, and it's a small one, comes from the project phase, where I felt in retrospect that the instructors could have been more proactive in steering us away from less marketable technologies. The flip-side, of course, is that we were able to take advantage of full autonomy. One group wrote their back-end in Go instead of Node; my group pursued mobile-first development using Meteor and Cordova. The skills ultimately translated well to more widely-adopted technology stacks in the workplace, and so I don't see it as much of a negative at all.

Adam G.

Excellent course work taught by great instructors. Lots of people I've talked to about MakerSquare are skeptical about what can be learned in 12 weeks, but that skepticism all goes away when they see the projects we've worked on (or after a coding interview) because grads are extremely capable. The staff is genuinely interested in helping people succeed, and the students are also great to work with.

christina D.

I took the Part Time Front End course at MakerSquare and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I have been a Designer for several years, but felt that improving my front-end development skills would really take me to the next level in my career.

Having taken the class, I’m not only taking on rewarding projects that are heavy on web development, but with the help of tools I learned about through the course, I was able to apply those skills directly to enhancing my professional website. I Highly recommend this course as an entry point into coding, especially if you are a designer looking to take the next step into development!