Hack Reactor is not for the weak

Hack Reactor is not for the weak

It was not easy. It took months of self-study just to pass the entrance interview. Once accepted, there was more work to do before I was allowed in the door. All in all, I was coding near full time for four months before I started Hack Reactor. Once in, I was putting in 60+ hour weeks for three months. It was brutal.

It was also not cheap. On top of the price tag, there is the cost of being unemployed for three months. I tried to work mornings while in the bootcamp, but the hours piled up and I just couldn't maintin. After graduation, I spent almost three months unemployed before I was working. I took out loans and ended up maxing out credit cards to make this happen. I was debt-free walking into Hack Reactor. Not anymore.

It was devastating to my social life. There was no work-life balance. There isn't time. Hanging out with friends and family became work. I was always calculating how much going to a friend's house was going to cost me in class the next day. I have a wife and kids that I rarely saw except on Sundays. I used up a lot of social capitol that I had to rebuild.

All that said, for my first job as a Software Developer I'm working at an incredible company making six figures. That goes a long way in Austin. I'll have paid off my debt in a year and a half or so on top of an upgrade in quality of life. Sure, I lost three months of my life (and six months of paychecks) and probably aged a few years, but the RoI was huge. I'm the first bootcamp graduate that my company has hired because I'm the first one that could pass their coding challenge. All bootcamps are not created equal. This one is worth it.