They are doing the same thing that Devry was. They are making up statistics about job placement to justify the high tuitions. This should be punishable by the state.

99% placement is impossibly high.

I am currently a student at Hack Reactor and I can assure you that the average salary students are offered coming out of the program are a lot higher than 60-80k, and the statistics are real.

I've been very impressed with the program and highly recommend it.

If you're inclined, please refer to this Quora post for additional details:

http://www.quora.com/Hack-Reactor/What-are-some-suspected-re...

Thanks for the information -- but this still doesn't spell out any breakdowns of who gets jobs where. This specifies that ~98% get jobs -- but at companies like Adobe and Google? I know plenty of grads from top tier bachelor CS programs at some of the highest ranked schools, and I'd still say that roughly less than half get a job offer at Google. I don't want to sound snobbish... but no doubt these guys would have a better shot than someone who began coding less than 3 months before? Until I see a breakdown it's really hard to say the quote isn't blown out of proportion.

From that GP's quora link:

We have an internal metric for measuring performance, defined as follows: "Of all those able to legally work in the United States who graduate our class with an intention of seeking software engineering work, how many are able to find such work within three months of graduating?"

I don't suppose that finding a job could be a requirement for graduation, could it? Or maybe Hack Reactor just has very rigorous graduation requirements, and most students wash out of the program after paying $15k? The link also implies that anyone who is enrolled in college or, more importantly, doesn't take part in HackReactor's job search program isn't "intending to seek software engineering work."

In short, I think they have plenty of ways to fudge a 9x% placement rate.

Well, "companies like Adobe and Google" is a meaningless statement, if you get down to it.

I'm also a current student at Hack Reactor, and while this probably won't change yours or anyone else's sentiment regarding such schools, I still feel the need to say it.

Yes, the claims are bold and certainly that could be an issue. It's certainly hard to believe the numbers stated on some of these bootcamps websites, and I'm okay with regulations and compliance, so long as they do what is intended.

You don't want to sound snobbish, but you've made a blanket statement by saying that " I know plenty of grads from top tier bachelor CS programs at some of the highest ranked schools, and I'd still say that roughly less than half get a job offer at Google. I don't want to sound snobbish... but no doubt these guys would have a better shot than someone who began coding less than 3 months before?"

It appears that you value a CS degree quite a bit, but can you tell me how often the courses you've taken in computer science are applicable to the work that you do on a daily basis?

What you may be surprised to find out is that there are people in these programs who have been software engineers, who have bachelor degrees in CS, lots of advanced degrees in the sciences, and a nice blend of smart people from top tier universities across the US and other countries. In addition to that, there are students who have programmed in other languages and in other contexts. The students who end up being a part of some of these programs have identified themselves as those with the desire to learn and to write code. A majority have learned to write code on their own for a long time. It may even surprise you that some of the BEST people are those that have never written a line of code prior the the months before doing Hack Reactor and have become experts in some frameworks with badges from those respective organizations as being members of the team, like AngularJS (Google).

A person with a CS degree from a top-tier school doesn't exactly mean the person can write software. Just because a person from a top school knows how to write C and Java doesn't mean they can immediately write web applications.

If you actually know how companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft hire, you likely may have come across Gayle Laakman's book, "Cracking the Coding Interview". A person can significantly increase their chances of being hired at a top-tier company by knowing how to tackle the puzzles and algorithm problems found in the book. I mention this, because a traditional CS program may or may not bring light to this material, and a person from a top-tier program could just simply miss an opportunity at a company, because he or she was never exposed to it.

I know I've already said a lot, but let me say something about Hack Reactor, because it seems that it's receiving flak for charging $17.8K. Hack Reactor provides a facility that's accessible to students at almost all times of the day with good and functional equipment to learn on. The instructors are some of the most well-respected people in the industry from Twitter, Google, Walmart Labs, Adobe, etc. I might even add that one graduated with nearly top honors in CS at one of the best programs in North America. They brought in Gayle Laakman to speak to us. We also saw Pamela Fox, who works directly with John Resig (jQuery) on the CS curriculum at Khan Academy, one of the founders of MeteorJS, and talks from founders and developers at Famo.us, Firebase, and others. They also hire out of our program. I almost forgot to mention -- when I say well-respected, I mean these are instructors AND former students that end up speaking at HTML Dev Conference, JS Conference, and are contributors to many open source projects that you may even be using. That says a lot about Hack Reactor's quality.

Whether or not I'll be able to help Hack Reactor's hiring rate and average salary claims remain to be seen, but I have no doubt that Hack Reactor delivers something invaluable to the tech community as a whole and giving people a chance they otherwise wouldn't have.

I will say this, though, personally I do know people from other programs that haven't fared well, and it certainly factored into my decision on whether or not to try one of these programs out. They're not all cut from the same cloth, therefore the types of students chosen vary, materials covered vary, and results vary. I think you'd find it comforting to know that, at least at Hack Reactor, we cover some fundamentals, like data structures, and are asked to implement them (although it is highly unlikely many do this exercise at a job), but do encounter problems where such knowledge is extremely helpful and useful. We also practice algorithms regularly to train us to become problem solvers and to recognize patterns. It's not just a language and framework and off you go... it's a lot more than what many doubters may think.

I also dropped in to call bullshit on that claim. If I had to guess, I'd say the better students (top 30%) end up at mid-tier tech companies, with salaries in the $60-$80k range.

I've seen this happen with a few different graduates of these "boot camps". The claims usually check out… on the surface.

The problem is the people who complete these boot camps don't usually have an understanding of computer science. All they learned is syntax, a popular framework, and maybe an algorithm or two. It's just enough to pass an interview (depending on the department), particularly in cases where the interviewer NEEDS to make a hire.

They get jobs at Adobe or Google as contractors and their contracts don't get renewed. Or they get a full time gig that is over there head and then get fired. I've seen it happen a lot. Far too much.

I know 4 different people who have gone through these that are constantly rotating through jobs. 6 weeks, 2 months, 6 months, etc.. They can't hack it. They will spend hours trying to complete what would be a simple task and have no idea how to read someone else's code. Their managers get extremely frustrated. Moreover, I've tried to tell these people that they need to go back and spend the time to understand CS and the fundamentals, but they don't want to. They have an expectation that they "deserve" to be paid a competitive wage because they are a "programmer."

Of course, these are just four examples. I know others who have gone through boot camps and HAVE spent the time to work backwards and understand the fundamentals. But they are, in my opinion, the exception now. Most of the boot camps out there are conditioning people to believe that, if they pay $20,000 they will be a certified computer programmer entitled to that $100k salary. The reality is that all they come away with is a good enough understanding of a language and a framework that they "code" a website.

Having seen this first hand in a number of instances, I sort of agree with the idea of trying to regulate this, because a lot of people are being taken for a ride.

It's not really hard to figure out.

Read it as "99% of the students we chose to survey and who answered our survey said they had jobs."

Survey your good students. Then throw another in there so it's not 100%.

I was in the 2nd cohort. I was interviewing at Google but cut it short to take an offer at Groupon. One of my 12 classmates took an offer at Adobe. Another was an 18 year-old English guy. Twitter wanted him but he couldn't get the visa and went back to London. He's working at Google Labs through Toaster. Another classmate abandoned his job search because he got into Tech Stars. That start-up died and he's working at Open Table. Another did his own start-up that's still going, Seedchange. Another was technical hire #1 at a funded start-up using Meteor.

The outcomes ranged from pretty good to amazing, but none were bad. Maybe you should look at the school's web page. Every single graduate is listed through whatever class they've gotten around to adding.

Me too. It probably doesn't include students who drop out. Also, it all depends what "companies like" means.

So it could mean that they get jobs at companies like Google and Adobe... such as McDonalds. That is also a company.