Sabio

Owners/Instructors: Gregorio and Liliana are the hardest working business owners I know. While they expect developers to be coding 70+ hours/week, I can almost guarantee you Gregorio and Liliana are working even harder researching what tech stacks are in highest demand to best prepare Sabio students for landing a job, partnering with non-profits and entrepreneurs for real projects for their students to work on, and being in contact with current students and fellows, helping in every way they can to support them in the job hunting process. The instructors are the best in the industry, providing the right amount of instruction and mentorship to help you become a good developer.

Format/Classes: PreWork gets you ready for cohort, it's face-paced and challenging, but like anything else, if you are willing to do the work and follow the instructor's coaching, you'll get through it with no problem. Cohort simulates an actual professional development environment with student developers working on real-life projects for entrepreneurs and non-profits. The website our cohort created is published and the user base is growing. This real project and my contributions gave me all I needed to sell my skills and experience during the interview process and helped me land a job earning $75,000 shortly after graduating from Sabio (note: Getting a job soon after graduating is in no way a guarantee, as Gregorio and Liliana have no control over how you spend your time. If you're putting in 5 applications a week, don't expect a job offer right away. Keep in mind you're going against every other job seeker in the region for these jobs, so play the numbers. I averaged 50 applications/day every single day until I had an offer. It takes discipline--that's something you have to find in yourself--and confidence--which you should also find in yourself when reflecting on how much you've learned over such a short period of time and the contributions you made to your project.).

What separates Sabio from other bootcamps? First, I don't see Sabio as another bootcamp, because bootcamps typically don't prepare developers as well as Sabio. In my first role coming out of Sabio, the word "bootcamp" never came up during the interview process or even when I started until my team started to get to know me and wanted to hear where I learned to code. The guy who filled my position before me had more than 5 years experience as a developer, and the fixes/features I had to finish that he started were full of indications that he frequently ignored industry standards (like triple-nested loops in SQL), and the senior developers on my team constantly complement the simplicity and cleanliness of my code and applaud my coding standards... all practices that Sabio taught me and prepared me for. When employers ask me about my lack of experience (less than 2 years) when applying for a job asking for 3-5 years experience, I confidently tell them, "I understand other developers may have more years experience than I do, but I'm confident that if you put me up against them, you'd see that my skills and practices are competitive with theirs." This confidence comes from the best industry practices that Sabio grills into us. 

Impact/Result: Before Sabio, I was stuck in an entry-level purgatory, never making more than $50,000/year without working a ton of overtime. I found Sabio while looking for a coding bootcamp that accepted the GI Bill, did my research and found Sabio to have the highest credibility, which was more important to me than any promised results that a lot of bootcamps offer. Three weeks after graduating from Sabio, I had an offer for my first developer role, a Junior Software Developer making $75,000/year with full benefits. That's 50% more than my previous highest salary. Six months later, and I'm getting interviewed for jobs in the $85,000 to $95,000 range, and some even in the six-figure range. Less than 1 year from graduating...  

Thank you, Sabio.

It can be a rather difficult choice to spend a significant amount of money and time in a coding bootcamp program. Let me tell you that it is a choice that I am happy made. I had my doubts about going to a trade school but there are skills here that you simply will not be taught in a university.

Even if you have a CS degree you will not be taught some of the modern technologies used in today's industry like React JS. Sabio offers a 4 week prework program where you go over the basics in jQuery, javascript and html. It is held three times a week. I would highly recommend this if you have little to know experience in web development. If you pass their assessment you will continue on to their Week 0 where you go over a series of tasks using the same languages and libraries.

Then the bootcamp begins.

It is very difficult for thos that have litte experience in web development to adjust to the technologies that they will learn. Some will laugh, some will cry and some will curse at their computer. When you have questions you will put yourself on the queue. You HAVE to try to solve your own problems but if you are simply stuck, that is when the instructor will answer your questions. The instructors are reluctant to help if you are asking very basic questions that can be answered with a simple stack overflow search. 

The instructors are extremely knowledgeable, especially Gregorio. They may not answer your questions all the time but they do know what they are talking about.

One of the things I enjoyed about this school the most was the family atmosphere. Liliana and Gregorio (owners) truly have your best interest in mind. That is one thing that I immedately felt when I visited Sabio and met instructors and owners. You can ask them for advice on many things related to tech, jobs and more. The slack community that you will be a part of is full of positive people, new job leads and tech questions/answers.

I am a few weeks out of Sabio and I have received an offer from a lead that I got in the Slack channel that an alumni posted. Just put your head down, do the work and keep moving forward no matter how hard things get. 

If you're on the fence about joining Sabio, you will not regret it. TRUST ME. You will learn the tech that you need to be a pro in this field and you will advance much faster than if you tried learning this stuff on your own.

If you’re looking for a career change or want to get to grips with coding Sabio is a fantastic investment. I had a wonderful experience at Sabio in Culver City, where I met some brilliant people and learnt copious amounts of new skills.

During pre work you learn the fundamentals of web development for four weeks and are required to take an assessment at the end to see if you are prepared for labs. In labs you dive further into the material that you have learnt and are exposed to more advanced concepts and challenging tasks.

For the cohort itself, there are two options, .NET and node. I decided to go with the .NET route as it gave me the opportunity to learn another programming language with expert instruction, I thought that if could get through the bootcamp I would be able to teach myself Node afterwards when I come out. The program sets you up extremely well for the job market, it teaches you the fundamentals and the latest technologies that you will need to succeed as a software developer. We had fantastic instructors for our project that made the entire learning process very enjoyable and manageable. We would do daily scrum meetings and the classroom environment was always clean and accommodating. The bootcamp is demanding but if you are motivated, enjoy learning and want to get into the tech industry then this is a wonderful opportunity for you. There is also financial help that you can get, I managed to get a scholarship for the program which helped me immensely.  This time last year I was considering checking out the bootcamp, after learning so many new skills, making new friends, working with some brilliant minds and with numerous offers for interesting work over $65 000 a year I am extremely pleased that I did.

Thank you to Gregorio, Liliana and all of my wonderful instructors that made this possible for me!

Let me start off with a thank you to Gregorio and Liliana, because of these two I was able to attain the skills necessary to change my life for the better and support my family effortlessly. I started the course through Antioch University because I'm a military veteran my GI Bill paid for the boot camp. the class environment was normal you sit in for a lecture with your computer open and code along with the instructor while you learn the basics. every day in class builds on what you learned the day before so it is best to always be coding so that you can build on what you know or do more research into it. after about three months of that, we took an exit test (code challenge) over the material learned. the next phase was the cohort which is structured to imitate a work environment. at the time I was there we were expected to code for at least 70 hours a week and yes that sounds like a lot but it is worth it at the end. we had a scrum meeting in the morning when we came in and one in the middle of the day for progress. the instructors are very helpful and they are all approachable if you have questions. what I appreciated the most was that the instructors never gave the answers when you ask them for help instead they tell you how to find the answers so the next time you are stuck you know what to do. that's not to say they don't help because they will if they point you in the right direction and after 20-30 minutes you're still stuck they will begin to drop more hints but the goal is for you to learn how to work through your code and learn to debug code properly. Sabio is like a family to me the people I met through the camp and the alumni are super helpful they pass job leads to you and they will refer you to there recruiters if their job is hiring. we all keep in touch through slack and as alumni, we are always welcome to come back if we want to be in an environment that promotes coding. It is easily a no brainer if you have the Time and want to change careers or get deeper into the developer scene Join the Sabio family 

This review is for the PreWork in Orange County.

I had been looking into bootcamps in the area. After visiting quite a few, I liked Sabio’s approach (prework, labs, then working on a live project, learn by doing philosophy, experienced developer teachers, friendly towards minorities and women, etc)

It was by far the worst class I may have ever attended for anything, ever.

The teacher was really ill prepared, glancing at the online syllabus and zooming through concepts without really explaining them. I even knew everything he was talking about since I had taken a class on CSS/HTML, had been building websites, and had already passed a rigorous javascript assessment at another bootcamp to test into their camp, and even I was confused at what he was trying to say or explain. He kept singling out one guy in particular and chastising him for not being in slack correctly, not knowing how to download applications, etc. He basically shamed most of the class for not knowing “easy” stuff they just hadn’t learned yet.

He also kept making declarations like “I learned HTML and CSS in two days by looking at the chrome dev tools!” and “It’s not rocket science, guys!” Then harassing the crowd for questions, then asking “Does everyone understand?!”, then getting angry when everyone didn’t immediately say “Yes!”.

What really cinched it for me is when he started writing on the flat screen TV in the rented office, to the audible gasp of the class. One person asked him, “What are you doing?” and he said, “It’s not mine, so I don’t care if I break it. Whatever, they should buy insurance.” He then proceeded to tell us to use the !important css feature, which any novice knows is horrible convention for just any old thing, and when someone in the class said, “Aren’t you never supposed to use that?”, he responded with, “Well, whatever, if it was some other developer’s code, I’m not going to waste a bunch of my time fixing their mistakes.” So his lack of respect for other people’s things extended to his coding philosophy as well.

He also told a room of new developers to start by using forms already available through extensions in Visual Studio when writing in html, javascript, and css, instead of actually learning how to do it themselves before relying on these tools. Had I done that when I first started, I probably wouldn’t be able to effectively build responsive web pages now because I wouldn’t fully understand what was going on.

The troubling thing to me is that apparently, this guy has been working for the company for a year and a half now part-time teaching this course, and no one had caught these mistakes.

The owners (who are actually a married couple) have been told about this numerous times, and their attitude is “you don’t like it, leave”. They’ve also been known to yell at students and kick people out of the bootcamp if they’re not quick enough, since they’re really concerned with their statistics (at least they have them though, and they’re legitimate since they’re a part of CIRR).

I would recommend some teacher training because a lot of this is probably correctable with a little bit of guidance (a workshop on appropriately timed pauses, how to ask concept checking questions, asking students for code examples, maybe getting the dude a projector so he doesn’t break the TV, etc.).

On the upside, I also talked to someone who had gone through the bootcamp and highly recommended it, but voiced similar issues about this one teacher and said the rest of them were super patient, kind and understanding, which I believe due to Sabio’s success rates and other people I’ve met who teach there and work with the program.

On the downside, I’ve talked to others who said that harshness and lack of teaching competency is Sabio’s thing, and that they skew their stats by kicking people out who don’t “make the cut”. So I suppose it depends.

Overall, I would recommend attending a PreWork class. The first one is free, and it’s a good way to decide for yourself. I personally ended up attending another bootcamp.

A word of advice: Online reviews are definitely skewed. Bootcamps in general pick and choose who they ask for a review, and it's hard to say no. Even emailing people on LinkedIn can get you biased reviews because people don’t want to hurt their reputation in the industry. I would recommend going to tech meetups, and asking around, a lot. Try to find someone who’s working and attended a bootcamp, who’s your similar gender and ethnicity. It’s the only reliable way to find out what a place is actually like.  

Sabio is amazing! As a person who never graduated from college but always had an intense work ethic, Sabio was the perfect solution for me to get into coding! Throughout my career I’ve found that learning and observing a professional is the best way to understand how to do the job using the best practices. I worked on a project which was using the stack React, Angular, Mongo, Express, and Node. It is a boot-camp like atmosphere but you have to understand that I came in not knowing how to code and almost freaked me out at first jumping into something that I have never done before but yet always wanted to do. The project that me and my cohort worked on prepared me for my current job as a working developer. There are some very unique things to learn like understanding realistic time frames for features, how code is actually written using best practices, code review for source control, agile/scrum project management, and being able to convey and explain features that I created in a professional manner. There were some people in my cohort that had some experience in coding but you should understand that the program is designed to challenge all levels of developer. I valued every hour that I spent there (70 hours per week) and learned as much as I could from our Senior Developer. I recommend  going to a Sabio Info Session and they can explain everything in more detail! As a creative maker/tinkerer person, I understand that knowing how to code is almost like having a super power! You can literally create anything. I highly recommend Sabio and for me, they are the best coding program in Los Angeles hands down!! Thank you so much Gregorio and Liliana!

I attended Sabio's .NET program as a military veteran and it was amazing!  There's so much to learn about web development and programming, but Sabio's full immersion program with real world projects definitely helped me develop the foundations needed to land a satisfying career.  However, it did not come easy.   It required a lot of work and belief in the program to develop the knowledge and confidence to build great applications.  No worries though.  Sabio's staff and instructors are intelligent and helpful throughout the journey, especially Dan and Daniel.  They never left me astray or confused.   The only downside to Sabio (Culver City) was that it's located off the busy I405.  All-in-all, if you're self-motivated and love solving problems, go to Sabio!  It's worth the traffic.   

If you're on the fence about attending a bootcamp, just hop over. I did and it's one of the best decisions I've made. If you jumped the fence already and don't now which bootcamp to attend, goto Sabio. The instruction and support is top notch. They prepare you with the latest and trendiest technology stacks so that you can be in demand by the time you finish cohort. You obviously have to do your part to get some interviews and confidently crush them. BUT GUESS WHAT? They prepare you for that too! Damn, win win win win win. Goto Sabio!

This review is long overdue. It's been almost a year (just a month short) since I graduated from Sabio's full stack C#/.NET program. Sabio's curriculum is excellent and the instructor's are great, completely knowledgable in the field. Besides what I learned in terms of programming, the job help you receive is the best you can find. They help you walk into any interview prepared and confident. I will say Sabio was not smooth sailing for my cohort, but overall they did what they promised when I handed them my money. They provide you with the intruction and knowledge you need in order to leave the bootcamp able to get your foot through the door. It is up to you to work extrememly hard during these 12 weeks. The work you put into it determines how well you'll do. If you follow all their advice to the T, there is no way you can leave Sabio without a job within 6 months of graduating. I was lucky to get a job offer a week before the bootcamp ended for me. I received 3 more job offers after that and ended up going with PDG Consulting in LA where I am assigned at Fox Studios working on a data streaming application to help them license their mvoies and shows to companies like Netflix ad Amazon. I am so thankful to Sabio for putting so much work into this curriculum and being there for its students (they just checked in on me recently and always provide great professional support that I am ashamed of not utilizing as of yet). I feel like there are some things this company needs to work on in terms of dealing with their satellite offices and communication; we lost two amazing instructors during my time at sabio, but luckily that did not do much to hurt my cohort. My entire cohort graduated with all of us finding jobs within a few months of graduation (only two of use were not looking for jobs). Overall, I recommend attending Sabio. It is your best option in Southern California for .NET./C# development. I went from working in a flip flop store in Huntington Beach, not able to find a job with my degree, to making a great salary for my age (25). Sabio helped change my life. I hope you give coding a chance and maybe try out Sabio as well.

What makes Sabio unique is the community - everybody started in the same place and don't even feel worried if coding is completely new for you. It was for me as well as so many of my classmates which made the whole learning environment so enjoyable and supportive. You can tell Gregorio and Liliana, the co-founders, really care about the community and students based on how readily available they are (even midnight on Slack) and by week 1 they probably know your name. The community is awesome at Sabio and it made me feel so comfortable spending a whole 3 months there learning alongside everybody.

Next, all of the instructors at Sabio have over 10 years of experience. That was what differentiated itself from other bootcamps. Gregorio came from Myspace, Mike came from StackOverflow, just to name a few. The instructors hold so much one on one time during classtime sessions to make sure they address your needs and tailor to your learning seamlessly. I love the interaction between teachers and students at Sabio. It really made the learning worthwhile, and it was amazing learning from teachers who've had so much industry experience. They not only teach you code, but good code and the best practices in the industry.

Go to Sabio!

I was a member of Cohort 46 under John Lee and it was a wonderful experience. There were long hours, but that was what gave me the experience with coding I needed in just a few months. John very clearly thought through his lectures and teaching method to suit all of his students well. He also made sure that all of us settled well into the program and was always there to support us. 

We worked in an agile workflow with daily standups and continuous integration, which is equivalent to the culture of many workplaces. John acted as our senior developer, assigning us cards and slowly giving us less and less help. He helped us to grow as developers and provided a realistic working environment. 

Sabio also did a wonderful job preparing me for the job search. John and Gregorio helped keep me motivated to send out tons of applications until I finally started getting some calls back. The practice interviews I did at Sabio got me prepared for my real in-person one that got me the job. Thank you so much, Sabio! Especially you, John!

I was skeptical about going the bootcamp route when I decided to change careers. I didn't think I could learn everything I needed and become a legitimate developer in 3 months.  Sabio's rigorous program and more importantly, their incredible community, quickly eased my mind and helped me gain a level of self confidence I never had before.  They do not eff around with your time or your future.  They care more about you than you might have about yourself going into the program and that support does not end when the program ends.  Gregorio and Liliana kept pushing me and encouraging me after I graduated, checking in on me regularly to make sure I was sticking to my commitments and not giving up on myself.  The end result:  an offer from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to join them as a Front-end Developer.   Never thought I'd step foot on the JPL campus let alone work for them. More so, I never would have had the confidence to walk into the interview knowing I had what it takes to be there without Sabio.