BREAKING: Launch School Capstone 2024 Outcomes
SEE ORIGINAL: [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024\_capstone\_salary\_data/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024_capstone_salary_data/)
Launch School is one of the remaining top programs, that announced a small cutback from 3 to 2 cohorts in 2026. These outcomes are very strong though still.
Overall for 2024 grads they had 66% placement rate for ALL ENROLLEES in six months (74% if you exclude non-job-hunting)
Early 2025 cohorts have a lower placement rate but a little above 50% so far.
Overall this is a good sign as the only CIRR reporting school that competes directly with Launch School is Codesmith and their 2023 data had a 42% placement rate (excluding non job hunting) in 6 months, which is almost HALF that of Launch School.
This isn't magic, Launch School's program takes a long tim…
It's not a trap and it's going to be more and more common.
I'm a bit concerned about the confusion that's going to be happening during this transition because there's going to be some companies that don't use ai and think that it's like a scam and then other companies that will be like shocked. if you're not an AI proficient engineer already and I think it's going to be quite the whiplash for candidates.
If you can learn it in 12 weeks then AI already knows it.
The bootcamp model needs to be re-imagined as a substitute for real practice and grinding the hours.
No more faking your resume and blasting out each others projects for GitHub stars... you have put every ounce of energy to real practice and for 4X to 10X longer to compete.
A though experiment, u/doyureadme
If someone said they were an engineer and want to become a therapist in 3 months the answer would be that this is crazy because of licensing etc...
Let's say the person doesn't need that and is allowed to, so they do it.
Would you as a customer want to go to a therapist that has 3 months of training and no licensing or certification?
The answer is no. Or maybe if the cost is cheap enough. But you wouldn't pay this person the same as licensed/certified one.
The bootcamp illusion is over. It CAN work in some cases but those are edge cases for people with tangential experience transition into tangential roles. E.g. sales person at tech company becoming a 'sales engineer'.
Preparing will take 1+ year at least. Even CIRR - the only reporting agency left, loosened it's standards to show placements within a year of graduating, and the best programs were sitting at 60-70% back in the 2023 times (with no newer data released yet, but anecdotally worse)
So if you sign up today to start in a month
1 month + 3 months + 12 months and you have like a 60% chance of getting a job by then at the best bootcamps.
So it's possible but if you don't have this time horizon you might be one of the people who doesn't get placed.
I would recommend getting 2025 numbers from all options. Codesmith's last published numbers are from 2023 students and Launch School has some 2024 data.
But the market really fell apart in 2025. My personal numbers observers are so bad overall that any bootcamp you join needs to be transparent.
Some school bought some time by saying 'numbers are getting better don't worry' back in 2024, but the students that accepted that, joined, graduated, and are jobless, are feeling quite pissed off I imagine right now and the market now is even worse for bootcamp grads.
There are valid reasons to go to a bootcamp but you really need to be going for the right reasons.
it's a great idea to learn how to code. It's a bad idea to pay $10,000 for a 12-week boot camp thinking that you're going to get a $100,000 job after it because placement numbers have been falling off a cliff this year and companies are starting to quote placements in a year post graduation.
Doing a boot camp just to learn may or may not be the most effective option and you should definitely look at it because it's an option, but there's lots of downsides such as the cost and the materials are more oriented to hustling your way into a job rather than learning.
I want to be very clear that I'm not defending this specific program, but I do think that the idea of apprenticeships is important. Perhaps not this size and shape but I'm curious how this works for people.
Back in the like medieval times people used to pay experts to teach their kids instead of school. for example, going to the local blacksmith and paying them to apprentice your kid to become a blacksmith. Which is even worse than not getting paid haha. But when school doesn't exist as a concept and that might be the alternative and people spend a very large amount of money on school.
That said if you're way more qualified and you're locked in for a really long time and you're not getting paid your market rate, that's also not healthy for the market overall long-term.
I hope I hope we figure out what that market rate is if it's the same for each person even and not a catalyst for c…
This is off topic and violates the rules. This isn't a sub for finding freelancer programmers and it's against the rules to share the same content across many channels.
Hence CC'ing the mods to remove the post and ding you for not following the rules.
Why would someone buy something for up to $10M is a critical question. If you didn't develop unique IP that other people can rip off with vibe-coding then it's not that. If you didn't get customers that can't easily switch off to a competitor then it's not that.
The problem with rushing out over the weekend and hoping for a $1M exit is that if YOU can do it so can I and 100000 other people, so it doesn't make any sense.
Most acquisitions under $10M for quick and dirty apps and products are TALENT ACQUISITIONS and those want TALENT. Not bootcamp grads with used to be musicians who built a music app that musicians love and got 50K installs in a week.
I'm being harsh because I feel strongly about the focus on the EXIT aspect. I've long recommended bootcamp grads build more things and do mini-startups and stuff to build experience with the goal of having something to get a job, not exit.
I mean I have to be careful with my words because of legal advice, but I can refer to past comments I've made on this topic publicly repeatedly.
With CIRR for example all those people who went in 2022 had their outcomes released in mid 2023 to early 2024. And you can see that bootcamp interest was already dying significantly, but the bootcamps marketed those outcomes and new people joined in 2023 because of these "audited CIRR results".
The bootcamps very well knew the reality behind the scenes and I feel really bad for people who joined during that time and graduated into a void of nothingness. I understand how bootcamps could be optimistic about a recovery and hoping for the best and can't assume the intention for not marketing the way they did.
But hope doesn't change the market and many bootcamps shut down, paused, or shrunk in 2024 as a result.
There have been numerous documented cases at a range of bootcamps (not Springboard specific) of bootcamps asking people to write reviews and share their experience, or giving them gift cards and stuff. Springboard also pays Course Report for referrals and Course Report often has a banner on their site promoting Springboard with a $2000 discount.
I have participated here for years trying to bring fair and level headed look at bootcamps, but that also upsets the bootcamps when they are also struggling to survive right now and I don't really want to do that anymore.
But it really is hard to navigate the space and I'm sorry to hear that was a challenge for you.
Google Trends shows "Coding Bootcamp" search interest on a continue decline, down ~84% Since 2022 peak.
https://preview.redd.it/0lix9nvxbm6g1.png?width=2224&format=png&auto=webp&s=727687ab439398f49b53488e1916bc89b0f6c58c
I was looking at Google Trends data for the term *“coding bootcamp”* over the past five years, and the shift is pretty dramatic and no surprise to people following the industry closely.
This lines up with what many people have already talked about here:
* The broader slowdown in *junior engineering hiring*
* AI reducing some entry-level opportunities
* Return-to-office policies limiting remote pathways
* Many bootcamps restructuring, pausing programs, or shutting down entirely (which has been widely reported across the industry)
Just to be clear, the trend data doesn’t explain why any specific bootcamp is rising or falling, but it does show a clear macro shift: ove…
1. Reposting across subs is against the rules
2. This is blantant advertising with UTM params calling this "campaign" "L10X\_social\_reddit\_Pilot\_IP\_Headstart\_Masterclass"
It's a bad look in this sub that promoted authentic communication
Yeah totally appreciate a good and fair opinion based discussion about my background and biases. If I'm going to be visible and active with my real name and posting hundreds and thousands of comments about bootcamps, this kind of discussion is important.
What's not good is if people state facts about my intentions that are false.
I do have some hobbies :D but I just always have my computer open too. I ski, I watch movies and documentaries - specifically about scams and about cults, I travel a lot, I like fine dining :D.
I think it's a sad state of the world that people just assume others have secret intentions or business motivations as a given and seems so obvious to them that they they can't even accept the truth.
It does really show who does their homework and who doesn't though, and who I don't want to work with in the future.
Let me know if you have follow up questions about anything I said! And I agree that my public communication is sincere and I wear my heart on my sleeve. It's why I get upset when people come up with ulterior motives for my commentary online. Not because it's wrong but I feel bad for people believing narratives that just aren't true and it makes the world a little worse off through distraction.
Even if you don't believe in AI consumer products you need to use AI tools as an engineer to be more productive.
Otherwise you'll be like bringing an abacus to work because you don't believe in calculators.
A large number of bootcamp leaders talk about following this sub closely despite not engaging.
My hunch is when someone has a rare good outcome the leader asks them nicely to post on Reddit to counter the negative vibe here with good news.
Then new people make accounts and post.
But then they either get scrutinized or the AI blocks them posting or commenting, etc... and the didnt really want to be here in the first place.
Plus one to this. I very clearly had the moderation rules pinned from shortly after I became moderator and no one read them or believed them and just make stuff up they think they believe in instead.
Most people aren't diligent and they want the fastest and easiest answer.
Most people don't put in the effort to think critically about things.
Most people believe things that reinforce beliefs (true or false) and don't believe things that go against their beliefs.
As a mod I was extremely consistent and careful...it's a shame people didn't apprciate that more and just blieve whatever they want to believe.
The problem isn't n = 0, it's that bootcamp websites have giant $110,000 salary banners on their homepage and they are selling the outcome, when the change in outcomes has completely tanked.
If they are selling the outcomes, the outcomes are very bad and the bootcamps are going out of business as a result.
The market could change. Right now there are 5 reasons not to go and no reasons to go. The sub reflects the market. In the good times times it was endless posts about how 'I did it you can do it too!' and bootcamps hit record revenue.
The sub owner posted recently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1ojikkf/rip\_coding\_bootcamps](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1ojikkf/rip_coding_bootcamps)
But seriously, it's getting nasty out there.
I just asked it and there wasn't a single [Reddit.com](http://Reddit.com) source in the results and most of the cons came from their defunct competitor's blog post: [https://www.rithmschool.com/codesmith-vs-rithm-school-2/?utm\_source=chatgpt.com](https://www.rithmschool.com/codesmith-vs-rithm-school-2/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
I'm not saying you got something different but it is completely unproven and unfounded that I intentionally manipulated LLMs through Reddit as a moderator and it's defamation per se to spread that as a fact.
Learn about the space before trolling me.
I have no friends and no following. I don't send text messages to my people asking them to spread fake news. I'm one person with one account.
Don't believe everything you read.
Other programs can be viable for different people and Launch School also is for the right people, not for everyone. You should talk to them and explore it cautiously, just like any program. Any pressure tactics or weird vibes from any program and you bounce.
I have this debate often, but my problem is that go to the bootcamp's website and if you see a $100,000! or 90% placement rate in large font in the hero section, then you are paying for a job and not for an "experience".
If you want to pay $20K for an experience, go ahead, but the typical reasonable person who see that "70% of people make $110K" is not.
And if those numbers or misleading then it pisses a lot of people off who paid for that outcome.
I like Launch School because their website doesn't have a bit salary number on it and the hero says that it's the "slow path" to becoming an engineer.
You decide if that's for you or not but it's not misleading.
People disagree with me on this and I'm open to debate but I feel strongly about my opinion haha.
I've heard some bits and pieces too. One interesting observation is that the founding company happens to provide bootcamp loans to students and has an interest in getting standardized data from schools across the board to understand the risk and the math for all their loans. Without any data, I suspect it's hard for them to get banks and investors to back them right.
The CIRR model is full of holes. One of the directors on their website already stepped down recently and I have no idea who is running it. They don't respond to emails asking where the audited copies of their reports are - because they are missing.
The CIRR model covers up terrible results.
Look at recent ones, about 50% of placements didn't report their salaries and that number used to be like 90%.
They change the placement window from 180 days to 360 days.
So a program that had a 80% placement (90% of people responding) in 180 days that is now a 70% placement (50% of people responding) in 360 days....
Yet the website has a giant 70% not much worse than 2022, everything it fine!
It's not fine, not at all.
Every day a bootcamp closes, or lays people off, or has departures without replacements. The ones in business have been trying to pivot.
Triple Ten is trying to focus on B2B AI upskilling courses for non-engineers
Course Report is just completely moving to "courses" instead of bootcamps and their homepage entirely changed, it looks like they are abandoning bootcamps.