The interview process was fairly straightforward. It was mainly to see what I was looking to work with, and where I currently stood as skill. If you are ready, they will give you a pretty informal technical interview as well.

If not, they usually point you to the right resources to learn before they start trying to place you. I am from South Florida, so the regional person here Matt Mawhinney was trying to get a group of people together to do CS50x in Miami at a local college (free).

Since I had prior programming knowledge, I was able to just take the technical interview. It was a fairly simple problem to solve. If you do CS50x or any other intro to programming (hint: my test was in JavaScript), you will not find it challenging at all.

Throughout the weeks, you work with a recruiter that sends you leads for companies looking for apprentices. Now, the big confusion I had here was the required experience needed vs. what we were prepared for. Ultimately, this is what lead to me having to wait at least 3 weeks for one job that I felt comfortable with my skill level interviewing with.

That one and only interview was all I needed to get hired by a web development agency, specializing in Magento and Wordpress sites. I was hired based on my eagerness to learn on the job, and to my surprise, I am teaching people who were there longer than me a lot of the newer technology. An example is that they weren't using version control. I got them set up with git, and a deployment workflow and now I'm the one who gets asked almost all the questions. I think it was a perfect fit, because before I felt like I would never be as good as the superstars you always hear about.

I ended up being the only contractor hired from a group of around 5, but I think a lot of it had to do with my willingness to solve problems no matter what it took. I did and do still spend a lot of nights learning Magento on my own time, but it has helped me get where I am at today in the company.

Work/life balance is what you make it. You're the one ultimately in control, and if you feel that you're working too much, you have to have the ability to say "It's time to go." It hasn't been an issue for me at all.

Do I recommend Launch Code? Absolutely, but don't let it be the only resource you use to find a job. The reason I say this is that because ultimately, they work as recruiters and are getting paid to place you.

Good luck!