We recently celebrated the 5th anniversary of our first day of class.  As we reflect on this, we also want to share with you what it means to us.  

Hack Reactor and Success Center SF collaborated to teach coding to homeless youth, single parents and youth involved with the justice system, among others.

Hack Reactor hiring partner Brandcast is hosting a React animation hackathon exclusively for students and graduates of the coding bootcamp.

How do you compare a 4-year Computer Science program with a 3-month coding bootcamp? Triplebyte produced fascinating data to do just that.

High school seniors from underprivileged communities go through Reactor Prep, Hack Reactor’s 60-hour intro course, through a partnership with Mission Bit.

Our scholarship to Remote Prep in coordination with Women Who Code will teach software engineering fundamentals to 50 women.

Women Who Code will sponsor six scholarships to the Hack Reactor Remote Beta program, our online immersive program. Apply to our scholarship now!

Women and non-binary gendered alumni of coding bootcamps now have a way to connect with others like them, thanks to four Hack Reactor alumni. Underrepresented && Nontraditional, started by alumni Kate Jefferson, Katrina Uychaco, Jammie Mountz and Sarah Yu, aims to create a platform for this community, and provides career services and continuing education. The group is open to all gender-diverse coding bootcamp grads (not just those in the Reactor Core network). Hack Reactor hosted the Underrepresented && Nontraditional hackathon for engineers to finish up their pet projects before the year ends.

RecruitLoop, which matches engineers and companies that want to hire them, produced a list of their top 50 female front-end software engineers in San Francisco, and the results validate what we see in our program on a day-to-day basis. Four of the 50 are Hack Reactor alumni, and one other worked as a Technical Mentor in our Remote Beta program. Inc interviewed 18 of these 50, including three from Hack Reactor on how they got where they are in their coding careers. These are some of the many incredibly talented women who have been through our program, and it’s very gratifying to see them recognized for their achievements and abilities.

There is broad consensus in the technology industry that everyone benefits from increased diversity, but how do we make that happen in a meaningful, sustainable way? Hack Reactor Core Software Engineer Savannah Kunovsky and Hack Reactor Alumni Jeanette Pettibone hosted an event at Hack Reactor to discuss this question and a number of related issues.

Hack Reactor’s alumni program, HRX, held its first ever Startup Weekend, where participants pitched ideas, formed teams, built out business ideas, validated them in the market, and presented them to industry leaders in one action-packed weekend. Alumni of every local Hack Reactor Core partner school and our online program were invited to participate, as were members of the Australia-based project Startup Catalyst, which coordinates an annual trip of 20 tech entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley. In all, 75 people participated, over 25 ideas were pitched and 10 teams formed to create the most impressive products they could in 54 hours. The weekend was sponsored by frogVentures, Kohler Law Group, Peerspace and Startup Catalyst.

Jiahao Kuang’s story is about how community can turn coding from a hobby to a passion. Kuang, a sophomore at San Leandro High School, had dabbled with coding, but his interest really took flight last March when he went to Hack Camp, a two-week session for high schoolers put on by hackEDU. (Hack Reactor provided office space to hackEDU for an extended period last winter.) Hack Camp showed Kuang both the power of coding, and how much more fun and stimulating it is with a group of like-minded people. The experience inspired him to start his own Hack Club in his high school, and eventually connected him to Hack Reactor.