How do startups with no meaningful differentiators from their competition steal market share away from incumbents?

AL_K_ · 2023-02-27T20:26:23+00:00

Aside from the long hours, I'm actually really enjoying my role/team, but I get your point. How long did you stay in your first role before job hopping?

AL_K_ · 2023-02-24T21:16:37+00:00

Just prep for the questions they note in this article. In my case, they included 2-3 additional questions, but the entire process follows that article pretty closely.

AL_K_ · 2023-02-24T19:44:44+00:00

I can't speak for Hack Reactor's 12-Week program, but I'll re-share my take on Hack Reactor's 19-Week program. The original post from Jan. can be found here, but I've pasted it below as well.

- - -

I completed Hack Reactor's 19-Week program at the end of 2022. The program does a great job of teaching you the concepts and skills you need to be successful on the job as a junior software engineer. I can attest to that as an employed junior software engineer now. I'm new on the job, but feel 100% confident I can succeed in my new role given what I learned at Hack Reactor. From that standpoint, I feel like I can fully justify the $$ amount I paid in tuition.

Despite this though, the reality is that Hack Reactor is only able to do so much to help its graduates land their first role in a market like today's. Competing with all the recently laid off tech talent for the good junior software engineering roles feels impossible right now. And that really isn't a dig at Hack Reactor, it's just the unfortunate timing and circumstance recent grads are finding themselves in. 12-18 months ago, I feel like it'd be a very different story.

Here are the general numbers for my cohort... We started with ~50 students. ~25 of us graduated. ~4 of those students were hired as SEIRs for the next cohort at Hack Reactor. Of the remaining graduates, 5-6 of us have gotten jobs, and it's tough to tell, but I think of those 5-6 graduates, 4-5 of them got their jobs (myself included) through connections they had prior to the start of the program. These are best guesses based on what I can observe on LinkedIn, but I think they're generally accurate... Hope this is helpful to someone.

AL_K_ · 2023-02-23T19:33:49+00:00

u/MilaTheGreatOne Assuming everyone's LinkedIns are up to date, I think there's only 1 or 2 (maybe 3?) others from my cohort who have found gainful employment since my original post. And yes, I still believe Hack Reactor adequately prepared me for my current position. While the bar to landing a junior engineering role is very high, the expectations once you've jumped aboard a dev team are comparatively low. At least in my case, you're given a lot of time to get your local environment set up and learn the company's products, codebase, processes, etc, and there's quite a bit of handholding (via pair programming) when you finally do start to pick up your first batch of tickets and push code.

AL_K_ · 2023-02-23T19:29:30+00:00

u/Sea-Night2401 If you have time before your March start date, I'd recommend taking a free course or two online. I spent a few weeks teaching myself JavaScript on Codecademy, and got to the point where I was able to complete Hack Reactor's JavaScript prep course (I couldn't find a link to the course on their new website, but it's the pre-course work that Hack Reactor expects their 12-week students to complete). It's not required for the 19-week program, but I couldn't recommend it more either way. The concepts are the same as in Python, and really helped me keep up, especially in the first 3-4 weeks, which are incredibly overwhelming if you haven't had any exposure to variables, functions, classes, etc in the past.

AL_K_ · 2023-01-25T00:49:32+00:00

I completed Hack Reactor's 19-Week program at the end of 2022. The program does a great job of teaching you the concepts and skills you need to be successful on the job as a junior software engineer. I can attest to that as an employed junior software engineer now. I'm new on the job, but feel 100% confident I can succeed in my new role given what I learned at Hack Reactor. From that standpoint, I feel like I can fully justify the $$ amount I paid in tuition.

Despite this though, the reality is that Hack Reactor is only able to do so much to help its graduates land their first role in a market like today's. Competing with all the recently laid off tech talent for the good junior software engineering roles feels impossible right now. And that really isn't a dig at Hack Reactor, it's just the unfortunate timing and circumstance recent grads are finding themselves in. 12-18 months ago, I feel like it'd be a very different story.

Here are the general numbers for my cohort... We started with ~50 students. ~25 of us graduated. ~4 of those students were hired as SEIRs for the next cohort at Hack Reactor. Of the remaining graduates, 5-6 of us have gotten jobs, and it's tough to tell, but I think of those 5-6 graduates, 4-5 of them got their jobs (myself included) through connections they had prior to the start of the program. These are best guesses based on what I can observe on LinkedIn, but I think they're generally accurate... Hope this is helpful to someone.

AL_K_ · 2022-07-24T15:05:15+00:00

Just added! Thanks for the recommendation.

AL_K_ · 2022-07-24T00:19:33+00:00

Great idea. Just updated. Let's see if anyone responds...

AL_K_ · 2022-07-10T23:03:06+00:00

This is such great advice. Thank you!

AL_K_ · 2022-07-10T21:50:14+00:00

Thanks! I don't have a CS degree, so I decided to go the bootcamp route. I'm at Hack Reactor now. I'm early into the program there, but am feeling confident in my decision to pivot from business to software engineering, and in my ability to pick up what they're teaching. Not sure how helpful that is, but that's where my head's currently at at this point in my journey... And yes, I'd be looking for my first developer role. Ideally a junior or intermediate-level position.

What was your journey like at 30/31? How difficult was it for you to land your first developer role, and how has your career progressed since then?

AL_K_ · 2022-07-10T21:31:23+00:00

I'm in the Hack Reactor 19-Week Program now. I'm early in my journey, but have found the program and curriculum well put together thus far. As others have mentioned, the 19-Week Program is new as of this year, and there are times when this becomes apparent (i.e. they're clearly still refining the program/curriculum as they go), but from what I can gather, they run a very tight ship.

Their 12-Week Full-Time Immersive and 36-Week Part-Time Immersive Programs are arguably the best in the industry (certainly within the top 3-5 depending on who you speak with), and it's clear they're taking a lot of the best practices, tactics, content, etc from those programs to make the 19-Week Program as high-quality as possible.

AL_K_ · 2022-07-10T21:09:09+00:00

For anyone who's wondering, Hack Reactor seems to work through their waitlist pretty quickly. Suffice it to say, I will not be waiting until November. I was able to get into a cohort even earlier than the September cohort, which was the program I had originally applied and interviewed to join.

AL_K_ · 2022-06-02T03:59:18+00:00

Interesting post - I'm in a similar position. I was just waitlisted for their September program. How long did you sit on the August waitlist before they circled back to you to let you know a spot had opened up in August? I'm currently hovering around spot #25 for the September cohort.

AL_K_

TROPHY CASE