Hackbright Academy

I graduated from Hackbright a month and a half ago, and I already have a job. I have no technical background, and I've been home with my young kids for the last almost 3 years and I still felt like I was entering the job market with a competitive resume. It was a big time commitment, and it was a lot of work, but Hackbright is such a supportive environment, and in an industry that's desperate to attract women I think it's a plus that's it's a school specifically for women. I highly recommend starting with the Prep class to make sure it’s a good fit since it’s a substantial financial investment, but if you like the Prep class and you want to change careers, you should absolutely enroll. It’s the single best career decision I’ve made in my 15 years of working and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

What I love about Hackbright is the heart of the bootcamp. From day one, you can tell that they are invested in making a safe space where you feel the ability to explore. They offer structure, but they also strive to indulge your natural curiosity.

The biggest mistake I made when I attended Hackbright was thinking that if I simply followed the coursework, I'd land a job. Very naive, I know. But! When I did land my first job in software engineering, I realized that Hackbright created something very special in my life. The connections and relationships that I built here will carry through with me for the rest of my life.

Hackbright is not for anyone looking for a quick answer. Hackbright is for those who are willing to invest in themselves and give themselves the patience to flourish and blossom. You have to believe in yourself: Or at least be willing to learn how to believe in yourself.

Follow your intuition. Say "yes" to every opportunity. Hackbright's mission statement isn't just some marketing ploy or buzzword. But make the effort to interview with alumna. Ask them what they got out of Hackbright. See if you're a good fit for the soft and gentle culture. (Even ambitious women have something to gain from this space: Such as female companionship and sisterhood).

With all that said, I wish every future & prospective "lady nerd" the best on her journey :)

My goodness...as an avid Yelp afficionado I am ashamed that I did not read these reviews in detail before attending the HB prep program.  I did not have a good experience at all.  First, the lectures are unorganized and most of the time--the instructors did NOT seem to want to answer any questions.  instructors snapped at you or acted in a condescending manner most of the time, and/or were away every other week

I am glad that they at least offered this prep program in order to give us a taste of Hackbright, rather than having us shell out $16-$18,000 for immersive program---PLEASE read these reviews and think twice.  don't get me wrong--if you already have Python experience and are a naturally gifted coder then please consider HB.  however, if you are essentially a beginner like me (although I completed codeacademy's Python course and I have a Master's degree, etc) then look elsewhere, you will feel left in the dust.  there are some instructors that are patient and good teachers but unfortunately there was just one in my co-hort

Overall I learned a huge amount of valuable information at Hackbright over a short period of time, and I met so many wonderful women who also attended Hackbright who will be friends for life.  I enjoyed my time at Hackbright.  However, Hackbright has a lot of work to do before I would say that this experience is worth the hefty price tag.

First of all - the career services portion of the program is a joke.  Pay no attention to the partners page of Hackbright's website.  The alum job board right now only has 6 jobs available that are for new grads with no software development experience.  Hackbright partners are happy to hire grads... after they have at least a year of experience as a software engineer.  As far as I'm concerned, job placement is the entire value proposition of a code bootcamp, and Hackbright fails in comparison to other bootcamps that guarantee job placement or apprenticeships.

Since graduating almost 6 months ago, I have had ZERO assistance from Hackbright with job placement, despite the fact that I have asked for help numerous times.  I've tried applying to jobs through Hackbright partner companies and my success rate has been even lower than just applying blind on the company website.  Worst part - when I apply to companies through Hackbright, they don't even send me confirmation that they've sent my resume to the company.  It's like throwing my resume into a black hole.

Hackbright is graduating more women into a market flooded with bootcamp grads than they can possibly hope to place.  The staff has good intentions and cares about grads a great deal, but this doesn't change the fact that the majority of recent grads are struggling HARD to find a job.

My advice - choose a bootcamp that offers either a money back guarantee of job placement, or has an apprenticeship or internship build into their program.  

Before Hackbright, I couldn't even imagine myself spending the kind of money it costs to attend a bootcamp, so I started teaching myself how to code. Several years later, I got as far as a few freelance gigs. I then decided to spend a "reasonable" $5K and another year earning a web dev certificate (nights and weekends so I could continue working full time) but that really only got me confident enough to get an email developer position, which does not involve any "real" programming.

After being unsatisfied with where I was, I reevaluated my life and finally decided that if I wanted to be a software engineer I needed to truly go for it, so I quit my email job and went to Hackbright.

It was honestly one of the best decisions and experiences of my entire life. I was getting the proper instruction I needed from top-of-the-line educational staff to finally "get" how these programming languages work, in a super supportive and hilariously fun working environment. I met amazing and intelligent women who were not only my peers, but who had become some of my closest friends. We still keep in contact today and meet regularly. Together we learned, struggled, succeeded, cried, triumphed, built solo apps, and became software engineers in the process. And after the fellowship was over, we didn't get kicked out and forgotten, we had tons of resources, events, and help from staff and the program, which we get to access...forever! (unlike other bootcamps...)

If I could go back and tell my younger self to stop wasting time with self-study and lack-luster programs and go to Hackbright, I would. But I can't and thankfully I am extremely happy with where my life decisions have ultimately taken me, which is to my new job as a full stack developer. But I can tell YOU. If you have read this far and are in the same shoes as me, I urge you to take the plunge and do it!

It IS worth the money. You will make it all back in a few months at your new job and then some.

It IS worth the time. Would you rather be in school for 3 months, or 4 years for a CS degree, for the same starting position at a job?

It IS worth it!

I really enjoyed my time at Hackbright. I picked Hackbright specifically because it fosters a supportive and encouraging community, and I felt I needed that to learn & grow in my career. I strongly feel that you get out what you put into this program. You should come prepared, you should do all the homework, and you should ask as many questions as possible. For me, the most valuable part of the program was access to the instructors--I was previously self-taught and the hardest thing for me was figuring out what to learn next, and what I had taught myself wrong.

The program is geared toward almost complete beginners, and it is not a substitute for a compsci degree, so you shouldn't go in expecting a compsci program. Some days might be review for you, in which case you should seek out new challenges and broaden your knowledge. If no days are review for you, you might need to work harder to establish a foundation pf knowledge that you can build on for the rest of the program.

Towards the end of the program, Hackbright will start teaching you algorithms and whiteboarding and preparing you for job interviews. I just want to say that interviewing for software engineering jobs is ROUGH. It is much harder than the bootcamp, and although there is a career services team that will try to help you, Hackbright cannot get you a job, you have to do that yourself, and it might take a while. You should look at their Outcomes report to get a good sense of the average first salary and time to get that first job, and be prepared for the long slog.

Also good to mention: you will come out of this with good friends. And after a year or two, those friends will be a solid professional network.

During my part-time class, it was a "hit or miss", depending on your instructor and class dynamics.  My review is a bit late, but after several of my friends talked about problems with the full-time Fellowship program, I felt I could no longer stay quiet about the matter. So....here goes:

There's plenty of blame to go around...from the typos in the curriculum, TA's who are recent grads but don't know enough to actually teach new students, lack of knowledge from some instructors and mentors, etc. The fact that Hackbright touts itself as a "feminist bootcamp" can come across as a negative. I am a female and also work in the tech industry since I left HB.  I can tell you that "man-bashing" is NOT professional; and just because I used go to Hackbright does not mean that I have instant access to a network of female engineers. Most of my contacts were found on my own, not through Hackbright.

If you are serious about entering this profession, then I strongly suggest you take plenty of FREE online classes before making any decision to spend money on an full-time Fellowship.  You will gain knowledge and experience NOT found at HB and then be able to expand your own network.  

Remember, you're spend MAJOR money for this Fellowship, plus you cannot work - which means you are dipping into savings to pay for cost of living...and then there's a 6-month or more job search in San Francisco/Bay Area.  Ever since HB was bought out by Capella, the program has only gotten more disorganized!  As a female, I believe we also deserve better materials and treatment from Hackbright.  Come on! There are so many boot-camps in the Bay Area...you people need to come clean and give more to your students!

TLDR: I came to HB with 0 coding experience. I tried 3 different online courses to learn coding in my previous non-programming, non-tech career with no bueno. Based on my experience and what I have gathered from my classmates, friends from other bootcamps and tech companies, do not expect that "omg! I'm going to be a programmer after this bootcamp!" Expect that you'll know one way to build a website. That doesn't make you a hot Mission burrito in this town. It makes you a Chipotle buritto at best. 

Disclaimer: This review is sarcastic and can come off as harsh; in complete opposite to HB's practice of being encouraging and believing in oneself. If you'll get angry or bitter reading negative reviews, skip this one. Also, this is meant for those who are career switching with no prior tech-industry experience.

Classroom experience:

I agree with many reviews who say that the instructors are knowledgable and are good teachers for basic programming techniques. You'll learn the basics of how to write code. You will NOT learn how to write good, scalable, or smart code. If a good CS degree holder can write it in 10 lines, you'll probably use 20-50 and your run time will be poor. When whiteboarding in interviews (or mock interviews), you'll be trying to use recursion to traverse the tree when a while loop is sufficient and then stutter, "I don't know..." when the interviewer asks for the spatial complexity. But, you'll be able to write code.

Social experience:

I understand that HB is now multiple classes per session. Each class has it's own personality. I met great ladies whom I am close friends with till today. We mainly commiserate about the state of our morale, bank accounts, and job search prospects (all dangerously low, if you're wondering). One thing that really impressed me was the diversity of women I met. Great women who work hard and deserve so much more.

Career Services:

They are great people in the career services. But I personally find them to be emotional roller coasters. They build your expectations up and then when you come head to head with reality and crash, they are nowhere to be found. Everytime they're told how difficult it is, they say, "aww, that's too bad. You need to keep trying!" After the 4th email saying that, I stopped giving them my weekly updates. I can now program my own bot to wish me good luck by text if that was all I wanted.

Go and study with your classmates and use the online resources (someone here linked a bunch of awesome sites). Besides, with the new intakes being so large, I have no idea how they expect to provide sustainable support.

Oh and those partner companies? Isn't great to go on on-site visits and talk to REAL engineers and get interview practice??!! Come job application time, you'll be told they're hiring people with 3+ years experience which is not surprising considering the funding situation now.

Post-HB:

HB is a safe place. After you leave, most of you are going to go feel effing terrible and great at the same time. You'll meet alums who are still job searching 6-months in and think, "Oh, that won't be me" but then wonder a week or two later if that'll be you. Go out with a clear mind and no positive expectations about how fast you're gonna be a legit programmer. That is the best start you can have. 

Personal note:

One advice I will give you if do end up going to HB: Your personal project is your own. A friend from the other class (same session) had to fight tooth and nail to get her project approved. Even then, HB refused to help her with the aspects "they warned her is over her head" but are basic things we should have learned about Python. Fortunately, her mentor helped her sort it out.

I wish I had made something other than "[popular website] but for [another everyday item/hobby]". I am now working on a less-bootcampy project to put on my resume.

Come project seasion, keep this in mind: Everyone is making a website/webapp. If you are front-endy, by all means, make a beautiful website. During the early years of HB, projects were augmented reality, compilers, large data sciency things, actual programs, etc. Do something to stand out from the sea of websites. Own it. Fight for it and don't give up cuz this is just the begining of the battle of entering the tech world. You'll be fighting to prove yourself even after you get your first job. Might as well get some practice in now. 

TLDR;

enroll if you really like coding, learning new things all the time, working hard; join the surprisingly awesome coding community

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I'm in my last week of Hackbright, and looking back I see that Hackbright has been a place where I've been really empowered and inspired to try my best.  It was a great learning environment to ask questions, be surrounded by curious and hard-working people, create personal connections with people who really care, and met industry leaders who were happy to join in our learning journey because of the name Hackbright and its alums have brought for themselves.

It was a risk, but I quit my job and enrolled in Hackbright because:

• I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of coding (I had previously taken some computer science courses and was studying independently in my free time)
• liked what I saw of its curriculum (more so than other bootcamps)
• the ‘challenge’ aspect wasn’t available in my current job trajectory

The people I've met here are some of the most resilient, tough, mature, disciplined, and admirable people I've met.  From what I've seen of the students, education team, career services, marketing, admission, the rest of the staff: Hackbright attracts diverse and phenomenal people.  You probably need to talk to one of us personally to realize this, but the more I get to know each person (especially among the students), the more amazed I become at how much each of us have overcome in the past and throughout the program to have gotten to where we are now—software engineers and leaders in our own right, but even better, with the humility, stamina, and motivation to keep on learning and improving.  And the curriculum itself is pretty demanding—10am to 6pm every day we’re learning and trying out new things, and afterwards we’re studying, even after arriving home late.

One thing I did not expect but super duper appreciated: mentors.  From the Hackbright education team, you have an advisor who you really come to trust and admire and a whole group of instructors who help us understand the concepts and care about how you're doing.  And career services has the best advice and plan dang cool events for us.  Hackbright assigns three mentors for you who are currently working in the field, from software engineers to VP's of engineering, to even CEOs who volunteer their time to help us at the start of our software engineering careers.  They’ve been really helpful, each in their own ways.

I would suggest that you don't apply if you're not that interested in coding/just having trouble finding a job after college.  Think of it long-term: it’s going to require a lot of work and personal initiative, not just in the three months of this program, but even after, while you’re a software engineer.  After graduating Hackbright, there shouldn’t be a point where you say “okay, I’ve learned enough.”  There are too many cool things to learn and do to become complacent.

If you’re stuck because you really like coding but you don’t think you can do it, reach out to Hackbright and see if it’s right for you.  Even though it’s a lot of hard work, there’s a magic of excitement that comes from doing what you really like to do that makes it all worth it.  Good luck and ada ftw.

The first day we started at Hackbright, we were a mix of people from both STEM and liberal arts backgrounds, previously working in tech (UI/UX designers, QA, etc.) and a huge, fascinating variety of other careers.

Fast-forward to Demo Night, when we presented our projects to a room full of prospective companies, and we were all Software Engineers, all so impressive in our achievements, all equally capable of taking on the tech world by storm.

This can be credited to what and how we studied.  The curriculum has been fine-tuned over the years, very responsive to tech trends and the almost-constant student feedback.  The instructors cater to our huge variety of backgrounds, getting us up-to-speed prior to the program with preparatory studies and by presenting the material in a fast-paced, but inclusive way.

This can also be credited to the support system they have in place.  In addition to having a Career Services advisor, we had an advisor from the education staff, and both advisors checked in with us regularly and provided us the support we needed to catch up on difficult Python topics, prepare our resumes, and transition from student to developer.  They also encouraged us to lean on each other for support throughout the program, which has resulted in a tight-knit group that genuinely wants to see each other succeed.

Following Demo Night, I've heard of many of us having interviews with companies that attended, and Career Services has gone above and beyond to ensure we all end up somewhere we will succeed.

I went back and forth for ages on whether I should do this program, but I am so happy with my decision.

Hackbright is such an amazing, supportive, wonderful place. I did a lot of research when choosing a bootcamp, and fell in love with Hackbright's mission statement, curriculum (cats, Harry Potter, and memes? yes please), supportive alumnae network, and Python curriculum.

They also do a fantastic job at matching each student with 3 mentors, taking you inside of companies for informative panels, and giving you a strong network upon graduation. I am so glad I chose Hackbright, and my life will truly never be the same.

My only negative feedback has to do with the admissions process. It was hell, took way too long, and there was very little timely communication. I have talked to many other women who experienced the same issues. Choosing a bootcamp is a huge life changing decision- timely communication is key!