[lorenzq]

This is definitely the case. I got accepted to both HR and Dev Bootcamp. I chose HR because it had the better reputation and had released outcomes statistics. HR had tougher requirements to get in, you had to understand more programming than a freshman or sophomore college student. Dev Bootcamp accepted me with a logic puzzle and basic if statements and for loops. There was no competition.

HR's recent purchase of Makersquare has me a bit worried that they are outstripping the supply of smarter incoming students but I can't say for sure yet without interviewing a larger sample.

[hrgradthrowaway]

Fellow HR grad here.

There was a point in time where completely unqualified students memorized and gamed the admissions process. Someone who did the remote interview copy and pasted the answers around the internet.

This led to a very large amount of students that were just not prepared for the program in any way, and it also coincided with the window in time that HR decided that they weren't going to remove any students for performance issues.

It was a fucking mess. I know people who mock interviewed students from those cohorts and they decided to completely disassociate with the school because of the experience.

I know people who technically interviewed them at their companies and they blacklisted Hack Reactor after too many of those rotten apples couldn't write a simple for loop. Some of these interviewers were Hack Reactor grads themselves.

I know someone who hired one of the people from those cohorts and had to fire them for performance after trying to give them half a year and excessive mentorship to improve.

It's a shame that shit like this has happened, because in my eyes it's irreparably tarnished the Hack Reactor name. I've given away my hoodie/tshirt to Goodwill because it just doesn't mean anything special to me anymore.

[lorenzq]

They've started kicking those people out again (around 7%). They check performance on your daily problems, how much you contribute to the peer projects, and a hard cut at a midterm exam where they record your screen and make sure you're not just copying solutions. They also weed people out on behavioural teamwork issues.

Some of the people who got kicked out just dropped back to the next cohort though, which is severely disappointing, because on top of paying the full tuition they are likely to fail again. I checked and there's no way those people can catch up based on their code, they're the kind of people Jeff Atwood talks about. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

[komali2]

>recent

It was several years ago, and Makersquare was by a long shot at least on par with Hack Reactor with their entry requirement rigamarole. If you're referring to the "merge" that happened in last October, that was merely the final stage in the purchase. Their curriculums and staff had long before been merged, the only final step was the name itself, which was hung up on Texas law regarding some financial aid packages students were able to receive.