Lighthouse Labs

I was working a dead end job, dreading each day, and unable to decide how to break out of my situation. After a lot of research, visiting campuses and speaking with employees, graduates and others in the industry, I narrowed down my choices to two major bootcamps in Toronto. 

After visiting the prospective campuses, the decision to attend Lighthouse Labs (LHL) was pretty simple. LHL ensures each student has the basic skills to succeed via testing prior to acceptance, and an online prep course to complete prior to beginning the course. The staff is always available, friendly and über approachable. Mentorship is available throughout the day (and some weekend hours as well), and the mentors are all amazing. The curriculum is based on current industry trends and is ever evolving based on constant student/instructor feedback. To add to that, the career services offered have a ridiculously high placement rate after completion, and many people in my cohort were employed before our final demo day (and the rest of us shortly after!).

LHL pulls no punches. One of the first things mentioned during the application & interview process is that there are high expectations for each student. You are likely to spend up to (or in my case, more than) 12 hrs each day at school, you will have weekend homework, and you can expect to be in a constant state of catch up. That being said, you are definitely getting your moneys worth, especially knowing that you're being put through the wringer. But you get what you put in, so leaving early, not asking for assistance and not giving it your all is only hurting yourself! Don't be discouraged by the time and investment of effort, because really, it's almost unheard of to be spending 9 hard weeks learning something and then jumping immediately into a new career -- this is a massive transition!

All said and done, I had the graduation and demo day one week, had interviews arranged the next week, and was hired the week following that. So within 3 months from my beginning at LHL, I went from a dead-end to an shiny open door.

This was genuinely one of the best decisions I've made in my adult life!

My experience of this bootcamp was lifechanging. The environment was fantastic. They push to you to find your own limits, and the structure is conducive to actually doing work yourself. The program focuses less on one-way theory lessons and more on collaborating with your classmates and seeking out mentors. Both the classmates and mentors play a big role in helping you grow and often become lifelong friends. Going to Lighthouse Labs was hands down the best decision I ever made in my life. It unlocked a career that would have been very difficult for me to achieve otherwise, especially considering I had no CS background going in.

Go for it! Prior to taking this course, I had zero exposure to coding and had only observed the use of a terminal without hands-on experience. This bootcamp is dynamic and demanding! Each day brings a new challenge with a fresh topic and material to dive into. The routine typically kicks off with some reading and a couple of exercises, followed by engaging lectures. There's ample time for hands-on work, and several afternoons each week feature additional lectures to reinforce learning.

I graduated from Lighthouse Labs' Web Development bootcamp in 2018 and would eagerly recommend it to anyone looking for a solid start in programming and/or building web applications.  My experience coming in was limited to a little tooling around in HTML and some very basic programming decades ago---nearly everything I encountered was essentially new to me (I'd been working as a technology teacher for six years prior to enrollment, so I was comfortable with the hardware, but was more of an advanced user than a developer in any sense).

As a former teacher, I was surprised and gratified to find Lighthouse's curriculum and instruction model exemplary: from my own experience, facilitating self-directed learning is extremely easy to do badly, and Lighthouse did it very well.  The daily lectures were typically good primers (their usefulness ultimately varied: many of the teachers were very good, but some moved too quickly for us, or meandered into more advanced areas before we felt comfortable with the fundamentals), but the actual daily dockets were where we solidified our basic skills, and the circulating mentors were usually quite good at scaffolding our development rather than dragging us to the correct answers.  By the time we reached the final assignment, I felt confident enough in my new skills to actually experience excitement (as well as the expected terror) at the prospect of being responsible for building something from my own imagination.

Students completed the daily work at different paces.  I tended to work slowly, and spent between eleven and thirteen hours on site, most days.  I occasionally enjoyed the satisfaction of solving assignments and puzzles in the moment, but usually, it was only later, when returning to a skill or pattern in future assignments, did I discover I already knew the necessary approach.  The experience was exhausting, but ultimately and repeatedly validating.

Like with anything you do in life, you're going to get out of this course exactly what you put into it. The hours can be long, the self-doubt can be high, but at the end of the day, you get to spend 10 weeks immersing yourself in as much knowledge as you can soak in. Are you going to be an expert developer at the end of the program? No. That's not the intention. The intention is to get you to a place where you can confidently apply for your first Jr. Developer role (or maybe a hybrid if that's your thing). You're going to network with industry professionals, be part of an amazing crew of alumni, and have more opportunities than you know what to do with - as long as you're willing to seek them out.

To be honest Lighthouse Labs wasn't in my radar when looking at coding bootcamps in Toronto. I went to each of the better known bootcamps first, and after all my initial meetings to inquire about the program, I was told that it was an "interview" and they were "impressed" by me, and said I will receive a $ discount for their respective bootcamp programs. However, Lighthouse Labs was different. After my initial meeting with them, they proceeded to give me a GRE-like test which I had 15 minutes to fill out to see if I was a good fit for the program.

In that moment, Lighthouse Labs stuck out to me and I could tell they really care about their students. I passed the test and decided to enroll in their bootcamp. Their instructors were extremely helpful, knowledgeable, friendly, supportive and fun to be around. There was never a single moment I felt like I wasn't important, even upper management knew about the students and chatted with them frequently. There is a great family-like vibe that this school emits, even when I was struggling my instructors, and peers were there to help me out. Lighthouse Labs gives you a prep course and the curriculum is up to date and exciting yet challenging in a great way. You need to put in the work. There's plenty of external and internal events that you can attend and get connections to industry people. 

Lighthouse Labs career support is incredible. I know that's one of the big reasons a lot of people join the program, for me it was a bow that tied the great gift together. I've never felt so supported in finding a job, from fixing up my resume to interview prep to office hours at local companies, it was great. (I hope the Universities' career counsellors are taking notes)

I ended up receieving a few job offers and accepting one before my bootcamp ended. Since then I moved up in the position and then took another job offer and learned even more. I feel really comfortable and confident in today's day and age when having technical skills is such an asset. These skills I learned helped me follow my passions and get paid for it. 

I encourage anyone in Toronto who wants to add a technical skill set or to change careers to attend Lighthouse Labs, you won't regret it. It gave me more value than my 4 year University degree.