⇥ Where will I be taking classes?

Outco is based in San Francisco, CA, but you can participate remotely from anywhere in the United States. We offer EST and PST classes for the convenience of our students.

⇥ What are Outco's core values/philosophies.

The core of our program is built on 5 principles:

• Commitment
• Confidence
• Communication
• Competency
• Community

⇥ Is this program right for me?

We've had senior engineers from Apple, engineers who score in the top 1% of HackerRank, and PhD's go through and find great value in our program. We've had fresh bootcamp grads from nearly every bootcamp, CS grads from Stanford, Yale and Harvard grads, and fresh community college grads all go through our program and find great value. And of course, we've had many engineers with anywhere from one to twenty years of experience go through our program and land a job that they are excited about.Outco is designed for engineers at all stages in their careers, with backgrounds ranging from QA, back-end, front-end, full-stack, data science, and even a few engineers who transitioned over to product management and are returning to engineering. What makes the program right for you is whether you feel like you're reaching your full software engineering career potential, or if you think you're capable of more. We're here to help those of you who identify as the latter.The common thread between our most successful engineers is that they are committed to their personal growth and take the program seriously.

⇥ How many hours a week should I commit to this program?

We treat the job search as a full-time process, we estimate that this program will require most participants a minimum of 22 hours of diligent effort per week. This includes at least 10 hours outside of class. Some people practice one algorithm a day for 30 minutes. Some others, depending on their time availability, will practice more questions per day. Everyone's ability and pace will vary, so this estimate depends on how much time you are willing to invest.

⇥ What coding languages should I know?

Our classes are language agnostic. This means you will be able to use the coding language of your choice for the homework and classwork.

⇥ How will I be prepared for interviews?

All participants will have access to a Career Coach to schedule mock interviews on a need basis. Additionally, all students are expected to complete:

• 11 mock whiteboarding sessions during technical days (topics covered: recursion, dynamic programming, sorting algorithms, data structures, app diagramming, object-oriented design, and system design)

• 4 mock career interviews (topics covered: How to Pitch Yourself, Mock Interviews, Reverse Recruiting, and Salary Negotiation)

⇥ When is the deadline for enrollment?

The application deadline is two weeks before the first Wednesday of class and the approval deadline is one week before the first Wednesday of class.

⇥What does a typical session at Outco look like?

Most classes begin with a thorough technical lecture and homework run-through. This includes a technical instructor diagramming the problem, whiteboarding the solution, and then live coding the answer, followed by a Q&A for any areas of confusion.

Thereafter, class can consist of anything from pair/small-group whiteboarding, pair programming, and interpersonal skills lectures/exercises.

⇥ How do you determine who qualifies?

Regardless of where you think you might fit in below, it never hurts to apply anyway. We provide all of our applicants with feedback that can be used to advance your portfolio/skill-set that will be useful on your job search, with or without Outco. The application process is broken into two parts, the background review and the fundamentals check. In each, we describe what typically makes for a successful applicant.

Background Review:

• Mid-to-Senior Level Engineers: For this level of engineer, we will be looking over your resume to ensure meaningful software engineering experience. This step is also used to ensure that relevant coursework will be made available.

• Junior Level Engineers (Including Internship Experience): For engineers who have on-the-job experience, including most internships, experience found on the resume is usually what guides our decision making process. If the experience was brief we may request any additional programming projects that the engineer has been involved with if not listed on their resume.

• Recent Computer Science Graduates (BS or MS) or Bootcamp Graduates (Without Dev Experience): Your projects are typically most important here. What sort of projects has the applicant built? Do these projects extend beyond basic CRUD operations, i.e. do they have API tie-ins, do they manipulate data in some sort of meaningful way, and/or is the UI well done? While it is possible to get limited traction from these types of projects, this traction may be frustratingly slow. We try to front-load this with actionable portfolio feedback via the application process, thus enabling you to have an empowering portfolio that gets you traction during your time at Outco.

Fundamentals Check:

The fundamentals check is a one-hour virtual session scheduled at your convenience. During that hour, we'll spend 10-15 minutes getting to know you a bit better in terms of your goals. What do you think you should gain from the program, what are your career aspirations, etc. We'll then dive into 30-45 minutes of pair programming. Here we'll check your ability to write functions, manipulate strings, and/or traverse arrays in the language of your choice with some simple problems guided by our staff member. We're not looking for the right answer necessarily, we just want to ensure that you have a strong grasp of your language's syntax, basic operations, and foundational data structures. The last 5-15 minutes will be reserved for feedback and any questions you might have.

You are welcome to apply and take fundamentals checks multiple times. If you do not perform well on one, we'll give you feedback that enables you to learn and practice what you need to learn on your own in order to pass. This is one of the advantages of submitting your application as early as you can!

⇥ Are there payment plans available?

Yes! We understand how expensive the job hunt can be. We offer a variety of plans, including one that won’t cost you a cent until you accept the role you want!