Hack Reactor Review

I attended cohort 24 in Austin, TX

First, a little bit about me. I entered Makersquare with roughly 2 years of Wordpress development experience. I was mainly self taught (aside from Comp Sci 101) through my job at a digital advertising company here in NYC. I was tired of working with Wordpress and wanted to take my dev skills to the next level, and work on some more interesting projects (I was working on click bait websites). I chose MKS because it teaches the Javascript stack, and their interview / application process was much more enjoyable than at Full Stack Academy.

Some advice before applying: Make sure you are serious about becoming an engineer. If you are doing this because you don't know what else to do with your career, or are expecting MKS to baby you every step of the way, this may not be the right place for you. Their methods are very much geared towards "making you a better learner". While there are lectures (Gilbert is a rockstar) and solid course material, it is up to the students to work together and solve problems without very much hand holding. The senior project feels exactly like a job, where you are responsible for the product from start to finish with no set daily schedule.

The program: It is rigorous. You WILL struggle. Do not let it get you down. There WILL be people smarter than you who will make you feel inadequate. Just remember it is not a competition! If someone is catching on faster than you, don't get discouraged... ask them for help! I always say that 95% of being a software engineer is failure. It's that 5% of aha! moments that makes it all worth it. I feel like I had a new aha! moment every single day here. It feels like you're struggling mightily, but when you get to the project phase, it's absolutely astounding how much you've learned in such a short period. Also, don't plan on having a social life during these 3 months!

Outcome: I was able to land a job 3 weeks after i graduated, working for a former boss, making 60% more than my last job with a better title (software engineer). I was able to negotiate using the awesome tactics that student outcomes taught us. I made $10k more in 20 minutes! It's amazing how few people actually negotiate their salary. MKS does a very good job teaching you these skills. I probably have a bit of an advantage over most people coming to MKS since I had 2.5 years experience, and a strong network of former co-workers here in NYC, but with the skills gained at MKS i am confident that every who graduates is strong enough for at least a Junior level job. I joined MKS knowing I would not be using their hiring network (which is mainly Austin, LA, and SF), so I can't really comment on that.

Negatives: MKS is not perfect, but they are always iterating and trying to improve. They are a startup, and it is apparent that they are experiencing typical startup growing pains. Also, your experience could be brought down if your cohort has some bad apples. Pretty much everyone I met was awesome, and I made some great friends, but the student body is very young, and some students are not mature enough to handle the kind of pressure involved with the program. MKS very rarely kicks anyone out, so it's possible that you'll have someone on your team not pulling their weight, dealing with emotional issues, being a jerk, or causing drama. (not all necessarily in my cohort, just what I've observed). MKS likes to spin it and say that you're going to have to deal with difficult people on the job, which is a great point, but not when we're spending a lot of money. Towards the end of my cohort, they hired someone will act as a student mediator to try to deal with these types of situations, which is a testament to how MKS listens to their students and strongly values their input.

My advice: DO IT! It was possibly the best 3 months of my life. I've never learned so much so fast, and the outcomes are real. Just about all of my cohort is employed. Have fun, don't take it too seriously, and Always Be Committing!

MakerSquare is the premier software bootcamp in Austin. Possibly the best aspect of the program is the fact that they provide an unparalleled onramp into the local tech community. You can certainly learn to code on your own, but building relationships with key mentors and influencers from the local ATX tech scene is not something that is easy to do on your own. The relationships alone are well worth the investment.

MakerSquare for me accelerated my web development learning tremendously. I was trying to learn from books during late nights at cafe's after work and that was inefficient.

With instructors and mentors here, I am now able to build any web app I can imagine and have vastly increased my personal and professional network in Austin. My peers from the class and my brother, who took the class with me, went on to be professional developers after the program. I stayed to work here to create more opportunities for people to learn to code and change their lives.

It's been over 2 years since I made the choice to learn coding at MakerSquare. The community, friends and opportunities have made the past years some of the most fulfilling times of my life.

This review is for the MakerPrep course offered by MakerSquare that I took. As advertised, the course said that it will prepare you for the MakerSquare technical interview, the main basis for which MakerSquare accepts students. The instructor (unprofessional, unhelpful, more on him later) even said that nothing will be on the interview that was not covered in the course. After my interview, that was absolutely false. 100% of the interview was over functions that were never gone over in class. I know for sure because I never skipped class and was very active during the class. After my technical interview was when I truly felt scammed out of my $750 for MakerPrep, and I do not use the word "scam" lightly.

The lesson in MakerPrep had no structure or clear objectives. Very frequently, after minutes of inactivity, students would ask each other "what are we supposed to be doing? Do we have an assignment?" The advertisement said that it was a class for "those with familiarity with the internet and computers." Thus, for anyone without coding experience. Those who succeeded in the class already had previous experience, or people like me had to learn everything on my own through Codecademy and Freecodecamp, defeating the purpose of the class. The only real asset was to network and meet people, but that was not worth the $750 I spent, nor the time. Hours would be spent inefficiently due to the instructors lack of knowledge or skills for teaching that the instructor possessed.

Furthermore, the instructor showed more of an interest in making friends and conversation than in teaching us. Not that one should be a former teacher to teach the class, but the inefficiency I mentioned was more of a lack of effort. He would give a task for us to complete, and then talk about his personal life while we tried to work. I have heard of other programs where the instructor walks around guiding others, while this one stayed at his desk having personal conversations.

One particular instance, for the last 1.5 hours of the class, he stayed at his desk, coded in front of us and talked to us about his code. For those without coding experience, you do not learn coding by solely watching someone do it and hear him explain it. He had no tasks or activity for the class at that time, and when class ended, I thought it odd that he said, "good job class, you all did great today." He said "we," the class did great, while he did all the work on his screen in front of us.

The true test of failure of the course came from first, that by the 2nd week, half of the people just stopped showing up(the course offered no refunds, so while not sure, I imagine refunds were not given). And second, the instructor (which to him he said it as a measure of success) said that in the latest MakerSquare cohort, 2 people came from MakerPrep.

If the stated objective of the course was to prepare us for the technical interview, and only 2 succeeded, then that alone also shows the failure. Again, this review is for MakerPrep, but it worries me for MakerSquare if it is any indication of the way they run their company. I most certainly regret spending my money on the course I took.

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.

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!

It's been about 2 months since I graduated from Hack Reactor Austin. I am currently working as a full stack engineer at a great company. I pretty much got all that I wanted.

It hasn't been easy tho, just getting into the program requires dedication and hard work. The program itself is super intense and there were tears and stressful moments, but in the end it really prepares you to hit the ground running on your new job. It is incredibly helpful whether it's learning fundamentals, learning how to learn or preparing you for the job market and it is worth every penny. I had my doubts when I was first reading the reviews about 6 months ago because it sounded too good to be true. I know my review sounds super positive but if you work super hard and you have passion Hack Reactor is the way to go.

I just completed MakerSquare's part-time front-end dev program.

A few things sold me on MakerSquare:

- They offered a part-time front-end dev program so I could continue working full-time and attend the evening classes.

- It felt personal. In my research, some dev schools felt more factory-like, while others (e.g. MakerSquare) had much more of a personal touch. The instructors obviously care and are extremely intelligent and helpful.

- Student/teacher ratio: My cohort had about 20 students and there were almost always ~4 instructors at each class. In addition to in-class help, our instructors were always available via email, office hours, or willing to schedule another time to meet if we requested. During class, there was always at least one instructor available to help me 1 on 1 with any issues, questions, etc. This in itself was one of the most valuable parts of the program for me.

This was a fast-paced program; so much ground is covered in the 10 weeks. It seemed a little intense at times, but I wouldn't have changed a thing. The beginning of the course actually reminded me a bit of the very first day of Spanish class - when the teacher begins class speaking entirely in Spanish to a classroom full of non-Spanish speakers. At first, the students have no idea what the teacher is saying, but over time, it somehow begins to make sense and the students are able to understand exactly what the teacher is saying.

Similarly, during the first few days of class, I think it's safe to say we were all pretty wide-eyed, hoping all those foreign words would eventually make some sort of sense ...and of course they did! Diving in head first, absorbing, researching and asking questions is the best way to take this course. It's perfectly normal to feel completely flooded with information. I promise, the farther you get into the course, the more everything makes sense. You get out exactly what you put into this program!

All of the instructors - Elyse, Alex, Mae, Flip - are all wonderful and always willing to explain things, answer questions, help you understand why you've broken the same line of code 276 times, etc. The MakerSquare instructors all seem to have a unique combination of knowledge, high expectations, patience and the ability to (calmly) explain the same thing in 37 different ways when the first 36 explanations somehow aren't registering in your brain.

Although I still have so much to learn, I learned so much more than I ever expected I would in those 10 weeks. I, without a doubt, walked away from the course with a strong understanding of front end dev and the confidence/ability to work on my own dev projects. Great staff, really impressed with how much I learned and I would take this course again in a heartbeat.

On July 10th, 2014, I heard for the first time the word "Ruby" used as a name for a programming language by a cofounder of MakerSquare. On August 25th, 2014, I started my first day as a MakerSquare student. On November 17th, 2014, the Monday after the Friday I graduated, I became employee number 2 at an Austin-based startup writing Ruby code for a living.

A very quick transition to coding for a living is absolutely possible, as I'm a testament of it. Looking back on the time and money I've spent to learn, MakerSquare is the investment that unquestionably impacted my future as a developer to the largest degree.

To anyone looking to become a developer for a living, here's some insight into my personal MakerSquare experience and some advice my reflections leave me with:

1) The only way to learn is to act on your desire to learn. From mid-July to late August, I did nothing but learn the basics. I did every Code School course, I did the Complete Web Developer Course by Rob Percival on Udemy, I read the Pickaxe (Programming Ruby), I read all the way through HTML & CSS and JavaScript & jQuery by Jon Duckett, and I completed every single exercise (even the optional ones) of the pre-work, so that by the time I got to class, not only did I have a small foundation built for web development but I was in the habit of learning rapidly. You hear "You get back what you put in," a lot around MakerSquare, and applied to this, there really are no better words to describe the investment you make.

2) Big investments are scary, as is the future, but the reward quickly outweighs the risk. I saw a great review of MakerSquare online (much like this one) and took a leap of faith on the organization. All it really took was for me to act was my want to learn and for me to allow myself to be convinced by an online review. But, while I didn't personally know anyone in or around the organization to give me an inside perspective at the time, the investment was guaranteed to pay off because I knew I would do everything I could to come out an exceptional (and employable) developer. I found out in the first week that I had made the right decision, which leads me to 3).

3) The interest to learn a similar subject brings about a community that could've otherwise never have existed. MakerSquare isn't just where I learned to code. MakerSquare is where I found the guidance and support I needed to be an exceptional (and again, employable) developer. During the course, I lived with MakerSquare students, I rode the bus to class with MakerSquare students, I ate lunch and dinner with MakerSquare students and faculty. I went to meetups and happy hours with MakerSquare students and faculty. I stayed up until the wee hours every night at coffee shops sitting across the table from MakerSquare students. For a year after I graduated, my roommates were MakerSquare students, the Lead Back End Developer of RoverPass (the startup I still work at) was a MakerSquare student. MakerSquare (at least for me) isn't just a place to learn to code, it is and always will be to me the place I found a community of people eager to learn to code, and eager to support and encourage others to learn to code.

If I write anymore, I fear you wouldn't continue reading. So, I'll finish by saying, my decision to join MakerSquare made sense for me. So often, people ask me if they should join MakerSquare or a similar school for coding. My answer is the same to you as it is to them. MakerSquare built the road, it's your job to walk down it. If it feels like the right path, then the chances are it is. If you've come to the decision that you want to learn to code and you want a career out of it, then as someone who has completely first hand knowledge of that situation, I give my full recommendation into MakerSquare. It gave me everything I wanted and more.

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!

TL/DR: Do it!

I just finished MakerSquare at the end of January and the program was fantastic. It wasn t perfect as it continues evolve; however, these imperfections are vastly overshadowed by the unmistakable value it offers for those willing to work hard.

I do say offers for a reason, because you get what you put into it. You can expect to basically live and breath code for 12 weeks. I easily spent 70+ hours either at campus or at home pouring over a project or reading documentation and sleeping every once in a while, haha. You need to dive in head first and just try to absorb anything and everything and the investment will be worth it immediately.

You can go each day and be flooded with information and not learn a dang thing. But if you really throw yourself at the program, take everything in like a sponge, digest as much of it as you can and then throw yourself at it even harder as the topics get denser, deeper and more specific. I say this because there were some who came in with specific things they did/didn't want to learn or had preconceived ideas about what would/wouldn't be useful to them, and I think that held them back in many cases. Be the thirstiest sponge you can be, ask questions as you encounter them, but also be willing to trust that the instructors have thought long and hard about what is important to teach you and when.

We used JavaScript and Ruby on Rails for our lessons, which you will be extremely comfortable with by the end, but the true value comes from gleaning the programming concepts which can be applied to any language. There are lots of people from my cohort who took jobs in languages we never even touched during MakerSquare; employers see that although MakerSquare grads might not yet know the syntax of whatever language the company is using, grads come out of MakerSquare with a strong conceptual understanding and the ability and learn new technologies incredibly fast.

MakerSquare has promoted really high placement numbers. I am not sure the details of other cohorts, but all I know is that my classmates and I have been landing real jobs earning real paychecks; the salaries in Austin have been anywhere around 50-75k/year, generally in junior level positions. And while I understand that all this might sound too good to be true, it's not. Becoming a developer in 12 weeks is not easy, but it's absolutely achievable if you give it 100%.

MakerSquare is a great organization. The most important thing that an organization like this can do is care about and respond to the needs of its students. MakerSquare is very feedback focused and will adapt whenever possible to improve the student experience. You will not be disappointed if you are willing to work hard.

MakerSquare is an accelerated learning course that provides the tools and the means to understand the ever changing world of web development. The staff and curriculum excel at adapting to the most current and on demand technologies. By completing MakerSquare you will have a firm understanding on programming languages, access to a very competitive Career Center and a constantly growing network of Alumni.

Before MKS I was very unhappy with my front-end developer job. I wanted to learn more, and being funneled into a Wodrpess environment with no way or direction out was killing me. I applied and was rejected on my first attempt to get in (this was after 9 months or so of learning and having attended another JavaScript based bootcamp). The second attempt I was finally allowed entrance to their program. I'm so glad that MKS vets their students this way, it made for some really solid students in my cohort.

I was stressed out the first 3 weeks of the program (as most people are) and felt as though I was an imposter on many many occasions. Then, we had a week break for Thanksgiving 2015 during which I put some of my skills to use and did some self study to review some of the material that I had suffered through during the previous 3 weeks. After the break, I all of the sudden had a few 'ah ha' moments! I was more confident in my ability to come up with solutions to the toy problems, and I started really understanding the material presented. Then one day, during the project phase, I woke up and thought to myself, "I am a software engineer". And it was true.

I was able to get a job after one week of completion of the program at a company in Utah. The company was so impressed with what I had learned in such a short period of time, that they made me the lead of the front end team. I couldn't believe it, and still cant until this day. Someone now pays me to play with code all day. It's un believable. I would say I wasn't even in the top third of my class (all varying backgrounds before MKS) and I have had enormous success post graduation. All thanks to MKS and their amazing system.

If you're contimplating applying, just do it. Apply. Today. You'll learn something from the interview process and your motivation to become a software engineer will skyrocket. Know that, you will be discouraged, frustrated, and feel like you don't belong throughout the process. But after you get in and start learning, you'll understand quickly that you had just made the best decision of your life!

Cheers!

-ryan

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.

I went through the prep program in Austin, TX, then the immersive bootcamp, then worked as a fellow and I have nothing but amazing things to report from the experience. You learn more than you thought to be possible in only 13 weeks time, and the curriculum and overall experience is perfectly aligned with what you need to succeed as an up-and-coming software engineer. The curriculum is constantly iterating based on the job market and feedback from students and graduates which makes the whole experience a lot like it really is in the work force, and ensures what you're learning is very relevant. I believe really makes Hack Reactor really stand out from other bootcamps. Now at my first job I am regularly amazed by how much the bootcamp has prepared me not only to ace the interviews to get the job but also to know what to expect out of the industry and how to handle it.

While it was very challenging work I felt supported the whole time and I learned more than I would have studying by myself for years. It's not only technical knowledge you gain, but working on real applications in a team environment (a big part of the experience you need to land your first job which would be impossible to achieve through self study). Staff at Hack Reactor truly wants what is best for each and every student that passes through the school, and the interview process helps to make sure each class is full of driven, smart, nice people that you will want to work with for 13 weeks straight.

If you put the work in you will absolutely learn the skills you need to ace a job interview and excel in the industry, and I can't imagine a better bootcamp with regards to the culture and the curriculum (and for me the location of Austin which is amazing).

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

Excellent curriculum, staff, and experience. Career services were amazingly helpful in landing me a job.

My Background: I am a electronics engineer that worked from day 1 after college in the oil industry, I had some code experience in college with assembly and c++, but nothing at a professional level, I decided to give a twist to my life and career to do something I love, code!, and didn't want to spend 2 years or more to make it happen, that's why i went for MakerSquare.

The program: It is challenging! even before you actually join. You will have to pass a tech interview, and a 6 week pre-course material. Then 12 weeks of 9 hour days of coding 6 days a week.

Believe me when I tell you this, you will struggle!, there are many things to learn in a short period of time, at some point one might feel that one is not catching up with all the information, persistence is key.

The course is divided in 2 sections, the 'junior' (first 6 weeks) phase, and the 'senior' (the remaining weeks). As a junior you will basically receive everyday lectures to introduce you to the challenge you're about to phase, that is 2 days code 'mini-projects' called sprints where you and another student will pair program.

On the senior phase you will be teamed up, to develop projects, emulating a real world job environment.

My Opinion: You will only get what you put in, MakerSquare shows you the way, meaning that they teach how to learn more than anything else, but there is no hand holding, it is up to you, your commitment and desire to be a web developer.

Pros:

- MakerSquare know what they are doing, they have a solid curriculum, and a solid team that supports it.

- They deliver, this is an non-traditional learn environment, it is fast phased, and I felt at times this was not what I expected, well, I can only tell you this, I have a job as a full time web developer and I can code. I don't believe I would have been able to accomplish this by my own in the same amount of time.

- They dedicate a lot of time teaching you the so called 'soft-skills', that will help you to be a better person, professional and will help you to land in a job.

- I did the fellowship program after graduation, that is 3 months being part of MakerSquare, this was one of the best experiences I've ever had, and I am really thankful that I decided to go for it.

Cons:

- MakerSquare is not perfect, and there are some things IMO that can be improved, the good thing is that the MKS team knows it, and they spend a lot of time and effort to make it better every day.

- You will be surrounded by people that as you will struggle, there is a lot of pressure behind, the vast majority of quit their jobs pursuing a dream, they are putting their lives on hold so it might get tense at times.

Final words: If you are a self-driven person, that likes to figure out things, you are serious about becoming a developer, go for it!, MakerSquare is going to give you the tools you need to land a job and continue learning afterwards.

I can't say enough good things about MakerSquare. After college, I started a career in marketing, which never truly felt 'right' to me. I wasn't ever excited going to work and counted down the minutes when I got there. I started doing a few online tutorials to learn programming and immediately fell in love with it. I'd finally found something that kept my attention for hours and something I wanted to devoted all of my time to.

I went back and forth on applying for a bootcamp for about a year. As a marketer, I knew how people would skew data to work towards their goal, so I was wary of the '96% hiring rate' that MakerSquare promoted. After reading everything about MKS online that I could, I decided to go for it. I was accepted and decided to move to Austin to attend.

MakerSquare was one of the best experiences of my life. I was surrounded by brilliant people all day every day who shared the same passion for learning that I did. There were times that we all felt frustrated, but MakerSquare helped push us through those times of uncertainty. I learned far beyond anything I could have taught myself in such a short period of time.

Just three weeks after graduating, I landed my dream job at HomeAway. I absolutely love my job, my company, and the industry. MakerSquare truly did change my life. If you're thinking about applying, do it today. It'll be the best decision you've ever made.

I came through MakerSquare ATX June-September of 2015. I cannot say enough good things about this program or the people involved in making it happen. From the founders to the instructors and the awesome people supporting the job search side, the staff is truly invested in us not only as students, but as alumni as well.

The coursework is rigorous and immersive, focusing on the most up-to-date and cutting edge tech. The curriculum is constantly undergoing iterative reviews and updates, which I think is one of the reasons they are able to stay on top of the game so well.

And on a personal note, the program was hard, but worth it 100%. I made some great friends, learned more than I honestly thought was possible, and ended up in a job that I absolutely love.

I was sick and tired of my high stress, thankless, engineering career and had a calling to learn to code. I applied and got accepted to the Austin bootcamp. I took a leap of faith by quitting my high paying job and moving to another state, but it was the best decision of my life.

The entire experience was challenging and exciting. I learned more in three months than I thought I ever could. This bootcamp was the real deal! One month after graduation I landed my first software engineering job which paid more money, had a way better company culture and was a lot lower stress than my old job. I actually look forward every day to going to work and interacting with my kickass coworkers. The value of actually loving your job cannot be overstated!

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.

I wanted to go from working in IT to being a developer and, while I had basic skills, I needed a lot of help. I got my first developer job 13 days out of MakerSquare and I'm still there. Money well spent!

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.

I graduated from MakerSquare as part of Cohort 3, at the end of January 2014. In April of that year, I started my first full-time web developer position at a local company. I was well-equipped to do my job, working with parts of the stack with which I was familiar [Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript] and then learn what I didn't already know [Perl, dev ops, AngularJS & node.js]. Working on a small team, I shipped products which improved internal & external users' experiences. It was a gratifying experience, one that I wouldn't have been able to participate in had I not gone through MakerSquare.

Their support after I was laid off without notice [#startuplyfe] was also excellent. With their coaching and connections, I was able to take my time and secure a better position at another company within less than two months. Their commitment to not only education, but also the community they're growing, makes me proud to be a part of the MakerSquare family.

The team over at MakerSquare is incredibly dedicated and they continue to substantially improve their program. I was with MakerSquare for two classes as an instructor and curriculum developer. I currently work as a senior engineer at Rapid7 (working on Metasploit), and I worked at many other software companies in Austin (including OtherInbox and Mass Relevance/Spredfast) prior to MakerSquare.

I would say without reservation that the founding team is an amazing group of folks. I got to know them all very well, and they re incredibly dedicated. It s difficult to draw comparisons between the various coding schools without attending them all yourself, obviously, but from purely anecdotal evidence, it sounds like the team at MakerSquare cares more about the success of their students than some of the other schools.

The cohorts themselves tend to skew towards mid-twenties, but they ve had students in their late fifties, as well. They are incredibly selective in the selection process (I believe the acceptance rate is ~15%), so it s always a great group of really motivated people. Rarely did I encounter someone who had trouble getting along with the other folks in the class.

I can now say with some authority that it s very difficult to teach the software engineering in 10 weeks (they extended the classes to 12 weeks for that reason), but MakerSquare is relentless in their drive to improve. The instruction team meets regularly to review lessons and student progress. The Learn app which houses the curriculum is a great resource for learning new concepts, and their focus on teaching the fundamentals of software engineering, rather than simply throwing you into here s how you build stuff with Rails, is also a big advantage.

There are now both full-time and part-time classes. Part-time classes will take you through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics and the full-time classes focus on software engineering, Ruby, and JavaScript. The JavaScript curriculum is particularly good - I haven t seen anything like it anywhere else, especially for folks coming at JavaScript from the perspective of a total beginner.

The environment at MakerSquare is one of enthusiastic learning. It was a joy to be around intelligent, knowledge-seeking individuals, who were united under the common cause of career change and coding. Pair programming was encouraged and students enthusiastically tutored each other throughout lessons under the watchful guidance of some dedicated instructors. This course is completely immersive, 9-6pm, M-F, and also requires outside study as well as two weekend-long hackathons. You must be prepared for this kind of commitment coming into MakerSquare. You will learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, and Rails, as well as version control, GitHub, relational databases, and so much more.

The Instructors are incredibly passionate about their school and their curriculum, and are often willing to go above and beyond normal expectations to see their students (past, present, and future) succeed. They have created a wonderful learning environment into a much needed field.

90% of your peers will be wonderful, caring persons with a liking for teamwork. As in any school, some personalities will slip under the radar that have no regard for professionalism. Largely, they are in the minority.

The Hackathons were the most useful weekends I spent at MakerSquare. They are what solidified my understanding of rails and how a professional dev team will operate.

The quality of life at MakerSquare is a whirlwind of learning. Be prepared to start dreaming in erb.

The career services offered by MakerSquare were 10 times more valuable to me than my alumni services offered by SHSU. Jessica is a great coach on everything from resumes to interviews to how to gracefully accept (or decline) an offer. She is impressive in her resolve and makes herself readily available through, email, phone, and office visits.

The tuition was very pricey, but the payoff has been more than worth it. I had more interviews after MakerSquare than I had received in the last two years of job hunting. I also have 100% career satisfaction. No regrets from this gal! If I had to do it all again I would in a heartbeat. Currently, I am employed by a local dev team as a Web Developer and I am learning PHP and Drupal.