Things Are Looking TERRIBLE For Coding Bootcamps in 2024

What are your thoughts about coding bootcamps in 2024?

As to bootcamps lying about graduates employment rates; lots of universities lie like that as well. They all fudge the numbers. Thanks. toronto canada.

My local college's introductory programming course only had a pass rate of 30% (taught by the program director themself), and they were perfectly fine with that. They'd rather students take it and figure out programming wasn't for them, because it does take a mindset shift to think logically like how a computer would process.

Which is good. Bootcamps should have never happened. They are the best way big greedy companies have to create an army of future underpaid devs and at the same time, raise the bar and lower salaries for grad devs

I feel really bad for my friend who graduated from Flatiron last year. He gave up his job search and is now in massive debt and returned to his job as an assistant manager at a gym making $18/hr.

Here's what I think...

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truth = !opportunity

If you have relevant projects and can prove you know your way around code and algorithms, then you will get a job. Intelligent people (the people who work at these companies) don't give a flying flapjack whether or not you have a piece of paper with your name and University on it.

Plenty of people get through University without learning jack sh*t (as the exception).
And plenty of people get through courses learning a ton (as the exception).

If you're dedicated, you don't require a boot camp or traditional higher education. Nowadays, a wealth of free online resources are available for learning. To effectively align with current industry job placements, consider seeking advice from experienced mentors in your field of interest.

the problem is that there are more "graduates" from these bootcamps than there are jobs out there.

For me, I went to a bootcamp that was attached to a contracting agency years ago. They tailored the curriculum towards web development for basic frontend / backend for the companies they dealt with. It was free of cost, the only catch was that they would contract you out for a minimum 1 or 2 years where they could place you with various companies. They only got paid if you worked for them, so honestly was a pretty good deal to guarantee you something to get the foot in the door.

The bootcamps that cost you money upfront are total scams.

I attended a boot camp, long story short, it was fun I mad a lot of contacts and expanded my network quickly. It also came with a career manager who I can still work with. The content we cover you can quickly and easily find online for free, but free content won't come with the on demand support that you get in a boot camp. Many people I attended with did find work, but I was the only one with a very limited education background. Conversely, I excelled and lead every class, scoring perfect grades on every exam. Despite the exceeding the expectations of the camp, I still am unable to find a job.

Conclusion, there are a lot of benefits to a camp vs self-taught, but if you don't already have a favorable background, neither will get you a job. When I took the class, to get a C.S. would cost a minimum 4 times of a camp and not possible for an already established adult. Now you can get a masters C.S. degree online for as little as 10K. So, Ultimately I wish I never signed up.

Boot camps are only there to give you a taste. It’s up to you to you continue learning. Also bootcamps shouldn’t be less than 9 months. Anything less than 3 months is not enough.

I just want to point out for your argument against CS degrees, that schools like WGU, SNHU, and others like that are "competency-based," meaning you can test out of subjects you are proficient in, and you can get a whole Bach degree in under a year if you really put in the work. I did it at WGU and got my Bach in CompSci within 6 months studying 20 hours a week in 3-4 hours a day, 6 days a week on top of working full time. So basically, in the same timeframe you can complete a bootcamp, you can get a Bach in CompSci.

CS degree is not even close to being an approximate of a "coding bootcamp".
1. I dont like coding bootcamps
2. I dont advocate for a degree either

But CS/IT is NOT going to teach you how to code. Period. There's no question about it.
Computer Science and Informatics are exactly what they say they are ... the science of information and how we make rocks to make boop boop noises. Like studying computer architecture, or outdated maths of AI. Or learning calculus which you will 99% not ever need in your job unless you're something like a graphics engine developer where you might need some linear algebra.

Most of what you'll learn in CS/IT has almost absolutely nothing to do with what you'll be doing at your job.

So, let's say you finish your CS degree. Then what? You don't know how to code and most employers search for people, even for junior devs, that already know how to code ...... and CS degree ain't teaching you that!

Coding bootcamps came to fill exactly that gap. To teach you how to code.
Bootcamps are not there to replace a CS degree, they're there to fill a gap.

So, people comparing CS degree to bootcamps, have no idea what they're talking about.

I've been to CS college. And yet I knew nothing afterwards about how to code, but I was teaching myself as I was in the college and did my projects till I got hired. Now that I have 7 years of experience as a Software Engineer, I still see people with CS degrees searching for a job. Why? Because They don't teach you ReactJS at college. They won't teach you how to write clean code. They won't teach you how to cooperate professionally in a team. Or what is CI/CD. Or what is Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, Postgresql, MariaDB, Mosquito, Redis, Memcached yada yada. They teach you nothing about any of those tools at a CS college.

The CS college to there to teach you the science of information and what is Big O, the maths around it and such. It is not there to teach you how to code. It's completely different from a coding bootcamp. Which again, I don't even advocate for. I think most of them are kind of scams and promise too much.

I'm currently in a bootcamp for full stack development. Now that I'm near graduating, I know that the company conflates their placement rates as well as places students in any job just to continue government and stakeholder funding. Some grads from the cohort of early last year still looking for jobs. It's just another cash cow dressed up like they are doing something for the underemployed community in my city.

Lol these people are trying to use AGI to generate something before AGI even exists. So did they invent AGI first and are keeping it close hold? I think you don't need to worry about using it for something if you invented it. You should just simply be rich.

For better or worse, software is a high skill job. "Better" because as you gain more skill and experience, it gets progressively easier to land your next job. But it can obviously be worse for those who are just starting out, and every job listing - even "entry level" job listings - seems to require years of experience. All I can say to those struggling to get their start is to just keep learning and keep getting better every year. BTW - the learning never stops. I'm 17 years into my career and I'm still grinding.

I don't want to discourage people who are just starting out, but having a 4 year CS degree with a couple internships is barely entry level. Even if you have a BS and MS and a year of experience, you're still considered basically a new grad and will likely only be considered for entry-level positions. When we put out an entry level job listing, we might get a few hundred resumes, and the vast majority will have at least a master's degree in some STEM field and a handful of internships. So a new coding bootcamp grad without a lot of dev experience will likely have to bring something extra to the table in order to compete, such as relevant domain knowledge or having experience working in tech companies in other types of roles, like project management, product, content, etc. Those are types of candidates I might consider when I review resumes.

I'm not anti-bootcamp, and I do think there's a place for them in the industry, but I think there may be a significant contraction in the coming years.

My wife's in school for a masters degree in computer science and the whole thing cost just 13k Canadian dollars. The bootcamps were asking for nearly 20k USD, which I found amusing. She was taught the expected stuff at university - intro to programming, statistics and applications (data analysis, machine learning), algorithms, etc, but the best part is the industry co-op. She's actually working on a real application that's hosted on AWS, written in Python and React, deployed on kubernetes in AWS. It is a 4 month long project with the usual stuff (user stories, jiras, etc). So in a way she got the expected CS courses where they don't bother with nearly any day-to-day dev skills, but got to experience and learn that in the co-op. I thought the whole thing was very reasonably priced for what she's getting out of it. She was a civil engineer before, so she knows how to put in the effort. Not sure if there are any comparable courses in the US, but if there are, this is highly recommended.

P.S. - I know 13k is not exactly cheap, but it definitely was cheaper than the bootcamps lol

A lot of them are also used for immigration scams to get people in a country they otherwise couldn't enter

I did my first computer qualification in 1991 (v difficult back then as my background wasn't in science or maths). 15 years ago my nieces asked what they should study at university. I replied "if you don't hate computers and smartphones, study IT". They ignored my advice and studied useless degrees. They left university unemployable and $60k in debt. They then paid another $12k to attend short JS bootcamps (this was about 2018). As soon as I heard this I said "this is a scam". Now they are $72k in debt and are working in jobs they could have done when they were 18yo, but they are in their early 30s and have all this debt for nothing. None of them can afford a mortgage when their father (who left school at 16yo) had paid off his mortgage by their age.

The younger generation are so much dumber. They ask for advice then ignore it. They are delusional.

As for the IT sector picking up, it's going to happen. The last 23 years have just been a continuation of the late 90s dotcom bubble.

Funny you mention mob tactics. There's word of mob cyber bullying or IRL raids(harassment) from one of the SF ones. Probably more about the spoiled kids in the cohort and less about the institution but who knows

i did a free web dev bootcamp in 2022 with generation and it was great, but if i paid 15k for it id be so f444cking pissed lol

I thought it was always sketchy that most of the instructors were recent students.

Hiring managers are ageists you’ll only get it if you just barely hit puberty

they said 'AGI' if you know anything about computers and programming you know these dudes are on some BS actual general intelligence is a long way off and once it exists programming as a skill will be obsolete.

I just wasted 3 years mascheting throw jungle with no clear path. No one could explain what's expected of me me at job, or even what to learn. Fix that first

if someone goes on a bootcamp and gets a job within 6 months afterwards to me thats a big fat WIN.

I’ve got 30 years experience but these boot camp yokels keep contacting me. Sorry, I already have a job.

As a 2020 bootcamp graduate, I thought I could share what it was like for me. I finished my bootcamp in Oct 2020 and landed my first job in development in Dec 2021. It took me a year of non-stop job hunting, building projects, and practicing on LeetCode. I am beyond grateful that a startup took a chance on me.

I knew only one person in my cohort who got a job 3 months after the bootcamp. He already had a B.S. degree from a great university and had taken a Java class before. A few months later, another person also landed a job, also with a B.S. degree. They were both very hardworking and smart. They solved a lot of LeetCode easy questions and a small number of medium ones during the bootcamp.

I think the reality is that about 10% of bootcamp graduates get their dev job within 4 months. Then, a few more get their dev job within 8 months. After 1 year, a few more secure their dev job. Approximately 50% - 70% don't become developers.

So if you are very very hardworking, relatively smart, and can afford it, a coding bootcamp can be a reasonable choice. However, it's essential to recognize that being job-ready often requires months of self-study and practice even after completing the bootcamp.

I started a bootcamp in August and got a junior dev role in December. It's true, you really DON'T learn enough on a bootcamp to be job-ready, you have to prove yourself with projects and be able to confidently demonstrate your technical ability and emphasise your willingness to learn to get your foot in the door. Don't lie and oversell yourself, employers are not stupid and can see straight through that.

Coding camps are a waste of time and money. You don't need to pay thousands of dollars for crap you can learn for free or at a fraction of the cost - but reality is - coding is DEAD despite the continued hype and 'dream-pushing' advertising falsely portrays.

Let me tell you - I can build an entire superApp on my own (front end, back end, responsive design, AJAX-driven, database architecture and web hosting deployment) - I have PepsiCo and Intel on my resume and I STILL cannot get work; when you see signs on Buc-ees and Panda Express advertising for manager jobs starting at 75 to 100K and you see dev jobs starting at 50 to 60k, you are better off just taking that unglamorous manager job. Most tech companies are utter sh|tshow dumpster fires and horribly run; Agile is the worst way to approach software development; watching your projects get half/ 75% finished only to be outsourced to India and Eastern Europe is literally seeing the writing on the wall 'its time to search for another job.' The web used to be at free flowing information and the end user, but now its just one giant, privacy invading, data monetizing advertising billboard for corporations. You have to sell your souls and ethics if you want to be a developer - there's no morality in writing in code to suck up, analyze and monetize people's data - but that's the internet we sadly now have to deal with - for now!

Coding was once a dream job to get a high income - not anymore, unless you own your own company or platform!

Can't afford college and I live in Kentucky....I started programming because I thought I could get a job by working hard every night and getting a remote job 😢 guess it's time to give up

Did bootcamp in 2019 for web dev, was also studying iot in university. Didn't get a job til 2021 but as a TA. Later became a instructor for bootcamp and after school program. Still cant land a dev role but instructor role im gainng some traction.


Tech field is extremely oversaturated and alot of people not going to make. Dont trust bootcamp coming from instructor that work an a boot camp. They are there to make money from you.

Better off starting a business in tech or work in a different field.

Not even codesmith ?

I've been learning programming and I'm going to university for a Degree, a lot of people are delusional and have a vague understanding of CS when I have conversation with them it's clear there's a lot of holes in there fundamentals most people after a few months cramming are still useless, I believe a lot of people are being cut loose for this reason because they are actually kinda useless and lack the fundamentals

The Coding Bootcamps are ok. The problem is that is not enough. To be a real programmer, you need a lot more...

This is interesting, but besides the bootcamp side there are 2 additional structural factors. One, we hit a recession - the market is crap anyway. Second, by the time that is going to be over - and do not expect that to be fast - junior coders will have a fun time competing with MORE experiences coders that use AI to be more productive and the company thus eliminated the junior position. Ups. Not that more experience people will not be on the chopping line after some more time (possibly 1-3 years).
This is a structural change that will be brutal. And there are those that see the economy in a larger view - from China (unemployment 25% and rising, 45% for unexperienced people) to the US also falling. This COULD be a 1929 style recession which took years and will TAKE years. And gain, AI is coming - right now it makes people 50% to 100% more efficient - but the next models are coming and if the recession takes 2-3 years, and another 2-3 years to hire all the people that did not get jobs (unemployed overhang) you are SERIOUSLY into the territory where AI has ALREADY gone through the job market and people are fired all over the place. And those jobs will never come back - we are on the verge of increasing the development speed of AI, by having AI train itself. A year or so and that is reality, latest. 5 years from now - Programming jobs will have gone the role of accountants. If you think "oh, but we still have accountants" - sure. In the old times, companies had FLOORS of accountants, every piece of paper was handled by multiple of them writing and summarizing it all into different books. Today it all is done in the computers. Consolidation of different accounts is a matter of zero time as the computer just does it. Smaller Companies do not have an accountant - they share one at a service provider. Know the little Christmas story about the 3 ghosts and Stooge? The main protagonist is accountant for Stooge. A job that takes a full-time person for what is a SMALL business - that was once. Programmers may well go the same way. Small specialized teams operating with large groups of AI agents. Which means that there will be a TON of competition and - cough - beginners may not apply while more experienced people are competing for the jobs.
Welcome to the beginning of the singularity - enjoy the years 2023 to 2033, the time of change. You live in interesting times - which, essentially, is a Chinese curse. Those jobs will NEVER come back.

Bootcamps aside, the entry-level developer market is dead in the water right now; even for people with a degree. It's a rough time to be in tech.

People should just go to WGU instead of bootcamp (reason i say this is because WGU is about the same price as boot camps, cheaper than some actually), they have CS and software engineering plus a bunch of other IT degrees, if you don't want to do calculus, go with the software engineering degree (you'll still do math though if you can't transfer it in). Far better than any bootcamp out there. It's a legitimate regionally accredited bachelor's degree, its challenging af as well if you are new so don't go into it thinking it'll be a cake, you can get through it at your own pace, its a hybrid of self taught and actual college curriculum, they also give you a lot of study material, and as long as you are a student you have access to LinkedIn learn and udemy business, as well as their proprietary stuff, and every student gets a "mentor" that will be there with you as long as you are enrolled that can help you with problems. I wouldn't recommend the "speed run" sht people talk about, unless you have some actual work experience, and can handle that and just want the degree (great for boot campers/self learners who have gotten a job), WGU degree's can give you some solid knowledge if you are new, the curriculum is pretty good and they keep them up to date since its 100% online, if you take your time and get through the classes at a decent pace, the CS and Software Engineering degree, you'll graduate with a bunch of projects to put on your resume as well. However, tech job market sucks right now regardless of what you do.

And oh yeah, if anybody thinks WGU is just a degree mill company, wrong... there is several people who have gone on and been able to get into Georgia techs online masters in CS, that should tell you, not only does it prepare you for that if you can complete it, but THE CREDITS TRANSFER to other accredited schools. Not a degree mill.

Only computer scientists do a proper work in IT projects. That's my personal experience.

I did a bootcamp in 2022. It was only $10,000 so I didn’t go into debt. It was so much fun and I can’t believe how much I learned. Met some amazing people. However, almost nobody from my cohort has gotten a job. Even some of the very top people in the bootcamp haven’t gotten jobs. Personally, I have given up and am continuing my career in as a teacher. I don’t regret doing the bootcamp, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone do one right now. Perhaps that will change in the future.

The MAJORITY of professional developers have NEVER touched “leetcode”. If your typical enterprise CRUD app dev making 120k was asking leetcode in an interview, it’s because the hiring team is trying to pretend they’re FAANG for their 100 internal users basic app.

I recently graduated a coding bootcamp and i'm very mixed on my feelings of it, I for sure got a lot of knowledge out of it, i had no idea where to start on learning to code, i'm in a better position in that regard but i have little to no hope of getting employment in the field in the near future, but also I learned enough to build a website for my wife's reselling business. I will continue the self taught route as i have a better understanding on how to do that now, but going to get a CS degree is not really something i can commit to where i am at in life currently, but is something i would love to do if i can actually just get into the field, but i work too many hours at my current job to go get a degree. Not to be that kind of person who is full of themselves, but i can confidently say i was one of the better performers in my class, but i dont know where the others are at in their job search at this point as none of them are active in our discord server anymore.

Bootcamps are a waste of time and money, same with higher education, where they do not show you upfront the number of initial to graduation students for the past 5 years, school expenses on average, salaries of the graduated students in the market for the past 5 years (market pulse), average initial salaries, average salaries after 5 years, keeping stats on job growth, and in the Tech field a health meter since it is a very health/stress/time demanding lifestyle, to take into account the ROI (Return on investment) to even consider getting in to for a life goal.



Example: X School, starts with 300 students for X career, 100 graduate, that is a 3:1

the 300 initial students spends 50k in school, that makes 15million,

then 100 graduate, 150k for each as a initial salary on the 1st year on average, it's a 1:1 ROI (even)

if they make 100k, then its a 3:2 ROI (loosing), but if half of the graduated are not working, it is a 3:1,

even if after 5 years working they do not make more, you can double the loss, it will be a 6:1



If this stats show another more favorable result, like out of the initial 300, 150 graduate, that is a 2:1

if those get 150k salaries, the ROI is 2:3 (wining)



Same:

If a career shows that peoples health deteriorates faster than others, people can think if the ROI is acceptable,

If you make 150k/y but have a life expectancy of +30, then you can make 4.5m during your life.

and is in another career you only make 100k, but have a life expectancy of +50, then you can make 5m during your life.



Most savvy people can do all of this research before hand, but if most schools did this for the general public, people can make a better choice for their professional and personal lives.

Im shocked Coding bootcamps are still a thing especially since the release of ChatGPT.

I turned down coding bootcamps for a software dev apprenticeship. Sadly they weren’t able to get me a job but at the very least I got 4 classes of college credit for free so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

And yes all the jobs I saw and I’ve applied for required a bachelors degree in cs or equivalent.

I think the thing that always surprises me about this, and it always comes back to it, is how programs dont really emphasize enough to students to actually like software engineering and computer science

You dont even have to do computer science in college to get decent software engineering classes. I did Information Technology with a specialization in game dev (because i did not want to be a web developer, I really wanted to make video games )

How i got my job was just being so stuck on "what classes will help me build my portfolio?" And i was so obsessed with personal projects and getting internships, and then web apps and getting internships and then getting my first job before graduating from college...

Like, I look back how crazy my path really was when id still call myself a pretty mediocre developer... I just, really liked making things or feeling really fidgety when im not doing something, that I ended up doing a ton of stuff in college, and kinda with work the last 8 years...

Now im doing a software engineering masters at a not so crazy high R2 school and as expensive as a masters sounds, i at least have breathing time to try new things

While doing student orgs, game jams, and all that that i still do with my alma mater, game jams, hackathons, getting advice on stuff i make, etc...

Dont look at coding as a job that pays cuz, you'll just be in the same bucket as other developers

Pick a goal for why you want to code besides trying to help your family, and strive for that goal. The money will come when you find actually satisfaction with software engineering

And the interviews become a lot easier when you are able to speak more on the knit-and-gritty besides some leetcode questions. Like know your CS, but thats not going to help you on the soft skills interviews you'll have

Go to launch school. and do well!

I literally just finished paying off my ISA at App Academy yesterday. While I got a job and placed, I definitely wouldn't recommend a boot-camp for an aspiring developer as a pathway into the industry.

GPT models and other machine learning will replace basic coding as abilities. Developers will need extensive math skills with speifalized education for their field. This is even tougher for new devs.

yeah Holberton School is a school in Connecticut I had a subscriber reach out to me in 2018 and tell me he was going to go there and then came back to me in 2020 and I helped get his first job but till this day he still paying for the loan it's actually 3x the price of the average bootcamp.