Both App Academy Open and Codesmith CSX are not good now.
App Academy Open: AA paused their SWE program so it doesn't seem actively maintained. The only good thing is that it's the entire AA curriculum and not just an introduction trying to upsell.
Codesmith CSX and workshops, I have a lot more to say about this.
CSX:
- it's an introduction to JavaScript only and their goal is to upsell you to Codsmith by the end. They don't have enough money to dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars to building a free platform of unique content that doesn't do.
- their coding editor CSBin isn't even HTTPS and my browser won't let me open it anymore... I don't see how anyone can take this seriously nowadays.
- it also hasn't been updated that much. They could at least run their curriculum through ChatGPT in 5 minutes to improve what they have now. But substance isn't the priority... spend more time…
Try to zoom out for a sec. You are a current data science major with one internship yet you are also employed full time and your company paid you to do GA and what was the outcome?
You got promoted? You got a new job?
You can get upset but please use your words or explain the facts because people reading don't see how the dots connect. You seem to feel very strongly the dots to connect so use your words to explain how they do.
This sub is full of "trust me" posts from 2022 and tons of people for so fucked over it killed the bootcamp industry.
My job is to make sure people explain how and not just what and I can't speak for everyone else but that's the most gosh darn healthy attitude I can think of.
Your most recent post says you are an undergrad data science major.
Define what you mean by "ending up in a great spot" and which program did you do and how much did you pay?
And you did it when? General Assembly completely pivoted so I would expect the experience now to be different from last year.
If you did it and they are marketing to you about B2B and making it sound like it's doing awesome you might be falling for marketing - it's a major pivot they are trying to boot up.
What data is telling you General Assembly is thriving right now?
General Assembly is owned by an international staffing agency Adecco and I pulled their 2024 Annual Report that came out a month ago.
1. General Assembly revenue was down in 2024 and called out explicitly
2. They decided to pivot it to B2B upskilling so it's too soon to know anything on how it's doing as a business model
3. The pivot helped them save millions of dollars of expenses and reading between the lines it sounds like they effectively shut it down and rebooted it as a brand in a new part of the stack.
The B2B thing may work but it's not really General Assembly of old happening to do well with b2b all of a sudden. The bootcamp failed and the parent company changed strategy to try to save money and enter a different market.
If you have legit work experience I don't think a CS degree will help, nor will a bootcamp.
I would recommend performing well on your job, getting recognition and ideally a promotion.
Avoid jumping company to company for smaller bumps and focus on career progression at one company if it's a decent company.
If you can show that you took on more and more responsibility and performed well then you should be able to interview for larger and more recognizable tech companies.
I'm bias because I co founded an interview prep career accelerator but if you do the above then we can help you get ready for interviews and frame your experience properly. It costs roughly the same a bootcamp or taking one off CS courses but your are getting direct support for levelling up instead of more vague credentials.
If you are already experienced though and not getting interviews or job hopping a lot, then f…
I wouldn't do a bootcamp no, it's probably a waste of $5 to $10K given you are in college.
If you can't get an internship, try volunteering for a professor/lab at school and if you can't do that, try volunteering for a startup. It's better to be paid $0 for as summer of real work than to pay $10K to do a Udemy-type course with human mentors.
The fine print secret sauce is that you have to be high IQ to pass the first test and then you have to work 120 hour weeks for 12 weeks to show you have drive.
If you do that, it's indeed free with no strings attached and you get a good job - that parts not a scam.
The reason it works is of the selection filter. It's not magic and it's not a scam.
You got their email without applying at all? That is sus but their founder is known for being a sketchy marketer type person. I actually think Gauntlet can work well if you have a high enough IQ to pass the test and then work 120 hours a week It's like a golden ticket if you are one of those people and currently make under $200K. The founder though has historically been super sketchy (Lambda School). I don't hold grudges because people change and have to be open minded.
FAQ (2025 Edition) - Please read if you are new to the community or bootcamps before posting.
*Last updated May 14th, 2025*
*This FAQ is curated by the moderator team as an ongoing, unbiased summary of our community’s collective experience. If you believe any part of this guide is inaccurate or unfair, please comment publicly on this sticky so we can discuss and update it together.*
# TL;DR
* **Search first, post second.** Most beginner questions have been answered in the last few weeks—use the subreddit search bar before you create a new thread.
* **Bootcamps are riskier in 2025.** Rising tuition, slower junior‑dev hiring, school closures, massive layoffs and program cutbacks. What you read about bootcamps from the past - and what your friends tell you who did bootcamps in the past - no longer applies.
# Frequently Asked Questions/Topics (FAQ)
**Q1. Are bootcamps still worth it i…
I think it's common after layoffs for people to give negative Glassdoor reviews. It's one of the reasons historically big tech has been quiet about layoffs and now since layoffs seem to boost the stock price, they are more public about even the smallest layoffs. Framing performance firing as a layoff and giving a comfortable severance package is the new norm to protect against negative blowback.
I would agree that those reviews are fairly negative given people have to have some kind of non disparagement clause in this situation and people risk that because they are SO upset.
Have you tried contacting them to withdraw? Given that you did a month or two I wouldn't expect a full refund but I would push for the largest refund you can get and explain your reasoning why.
I've brought it up directly to their leaders a couple of times now and I'm not getting a response or acknowledgement on it. I'm not being mean, I'm trying to give them a strategy that recognizes the value they create and focuses the energy on that value.
They have been losing staff members left right and center and hardly have anyone left anymore, and I really feel like if they don't change their tune they will cease to exist soon enough.
But they have been pushing mid level and senior for 10 years now and it might just be the hill they are willing to die on - would rather not exist than focus on entry level placements.
From my experience people are super nervous for their interviews and it's easier to tell than it might seem with simple follow-ups if you're a really skilled interviewer.
you might get a junior interviewer who's not super well trained that you trick, but if you have a senior one, you'll get banned for life so you're pretty much risking that.
Step 1. Go to San Francisco.
Step 2. Go to Dolores Park.
Step 3. Bring a large whiteboard on wheels
Step 4. Solve leetcode problems and see what happens.
I've done this so I know.
16K seems like a lot for the summer. And I want to know more about the "virtual internship".
Instead of being -$16K I would volunteer for a professor or research lab if you don't have an internship.
If you can't do that, I would dedicate the entire summer working on a very large well known open source project and try to ship a real feature. That would count equal to an internship as well.
I wouldn't pay for anything vague like that and that's not a comment on this specific bootcamp, but all $10K+ bootcamp-like options for your situation.
When I was at Facebook, the best of the best engineers best of the best Engineers - like the top 5% that get all kinds of bonus discretionary stock and other perks - had often no LinkedIn for their LinkedIn. had nothing on it and they were extremely hard to find.
The only way to find them would be through networking. the recruiters that were able to hire these people were socially friends with them and had overlapping friend circles and would literally bump it to them in person. once you're able to get a couple then you need them to refer their friends.
I was one of these people and I ignored every single recruiter. A Google recruiter even called my parents in another country to try to get me to respond to them. I did not.
It fluctuates with the market. My advice is not to follow the market because you'll always be behind. Leverage your strengths and be so good at the things you are good at that you get the job regardless of the market.
I agree with a lot of others on here. it's never too late to learn and with artificial intelligence, it's probably going to be easier to transition into the tech industry as a whole but harder to transition into software engineering roles or highly technical roles in the industry.
So also as others said I wouldn't do it with the intention of only getting a great software engineer job in 6 months or a year - and this is why many think the bootcamp model is dead for software engineers.
But learning to code is a great idea because if you do it properly, you'll develop analytical skills and abstract thinking skills that will be really helpful in an artificial intelligence and tech driven future.
The job market is terrible right now for bootcamp grads - arguably worse than ever before since the origin of bootcamps in 2012.
So I would proceed with caution. People are getting jobs, but each case is a one off and there aren't reproducible pathways that any bootcamp can promise. Past outcomes don't really mean much.
If your goal is just to learn, I would do something cheap or free. Like a really good cheaper online course.
Bootcamps as a whole offer similar content to a good Coursera course and you are paying 50X more to get accountability and support.
But I would only pay that if you don't think you can get through an online course on your own.
Nothing in life is free. If you only pay if you get a SWE job just think about all of the other people who didn't get SWE jobs and didn't pay.
When the best bootcamps have tanking placement rates, who is paying for all of those non-placement's training?
Two answers:
1. No one - and the schools are shutting down left right and center, laying people off, and cutting back
2. The people who are placed are effectively paying for the people who aren't.
So if you are an amazing student and very likely to place you should NOT go somewhere with a job guarantee because you are likely paying for all the people who didn't get them in addition to yourself.
Well it won't scale overnight.
While the government DEI stuff impacted apprenticeships, the government also is pushing for MORE apprenticeships for AI, but if it's only a top level directive and it will take a good year or two before we see companies offering those.
I think Google is one of the only big tech to have one of these government approved apprenticeships, so they come out slowly.
Apprenticeships at top tier companies are fantastic. You'll find they are very competitive and in many cases bootcamp grads compete for the slots.
So they aren't so much an evolution of bootcamps but step 2 after having some initial feet wet. Bootcamps are one way to do that but you can also self teach or take community college courses.
The problem with bootcamps is as you said - Google takes like 10 people or whatever and there are 10,000 bootcamp grads a year.
New DEI pressure from the government resulted in pull backs in a lot of apprenticeships programs making matters worse for bootcamp grads.
So the TLDR: yes - aim for apprenticeships, but you might have to do some courses to even compete for them.
I'm just curious how you found the course and what makes you think you would get a job as a data scientist after? Or that's why you are asking on Reddit because you weren't sure?
In my experience, you'll need fewer of those people because the AI will do most of the time consuming work.
For example, an analyst can look a bunch of messy data and put down in words what's needed to put together the data for AI to do.
Then they can look at the results and make english/verbal/written comments on mistakes or cases that were missed and then run it again.
The work needed is in articulating how to get the data into a format that's useful and not to actually go line by line to do that.
This is probably fake to bait recruiters into contacting them or lying about the title.
SWE 3 at Google = mid level (L4)
So it's skipping Senior (L5), Staff (L6), Senior Staff (L7), Principal (L8).
The progression between those is much longer than the rest and this trajectory is impossible.
I would say it's top 10 to 20 and depends on the company where they consider it. some companies consider hire and put it in their rotation and some don't.
it is indeed a very good program, but it's also very large. So for a company to commit to recruiting from there, they're going to have to put a lot of resources into it.
UIUC is a bit similar.
It's a lot easier for the companies to send one recruiter to a really small prestigious highly ranged program who just gets to know the students and wines and dines them, than it is to send like two to three recruiters and two to three Engineers to Georgia Tech to spend a few days combing through hundreds and hundreds of resumes and trying to find the best 10 people.
this is probably TMI at this point haha
Just be careful. I'm a big fan of celebrating success. But when one off success gives you hope to replicate it, in this market you cannot.
Every placement is one off and unique and there is no entry level hiring right now and one off stories don't change the reality of the market.
I don't show up here just waiting for bootcamps to die and people to fail so I feel good about my day.... whatever the times are - bootcamps have a reputation of stretching the marketing, and I'm here to try to make sure people see it how it is.
Tell that to all the people that lost their jobs because they want to work DEI and their departments were cut and they don't have a job anymore and they have a hard time finding a similar job.
I'm not agreeing or disagree with 2025 outlook, but I really think the DEI stuff at the federal level is impacting the vibes.
Big money doesn't want to be see funneling funds to organizations promoting DEI both for legal reasons and for political ones.
It's crazy how DEI went from being something that you felt guilty NOT saying, to something you feel guilty SAYING lol
I would recommend this exact search with sorting and such as specified: [https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%22merit%20america%22&origin=GLOBAL\_SEARCH\_HEADER&sid=zHY&sortBy=%22date\_posted%22](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%22merit%20america%22&origin=GLOBAL_SEARCH_HEADER&sid=zHY&sortBy=%22date_posted%22)
Layoff at Merit America (described as "massive" on LinkedIn but size not confirmed) - non profit tech bootcamp (focusing on UX/IT/Cyber)
A number of people have been posting about being laid off from Merit America today on LinkedIn. Sources confirm the layoff, but no official notice on the size or impact yet.
I'll edit as news develops.
Current thoughts:
1. Turing School (which is shutting down) was handing off some students to Merit America. While MA is intact and operating fine, just at a smaller scale, this is still just concerning about the industry in general :(
2. Merit America is a non-profit with a social good mission and hopefully the layoffs are enough to keep them going. Given all of the DEI cutbacks at their big tech partners, I'm not extremely optimistic, but let's give them a chance.
If you know more, let me know!
I think the person was also being a bit sarcastic because I can't find any threads from any SWE who did Triple Ten and actually got a job eventually. Lots of people who start it, want to share referral codes to get $500, but I really want to see people actually get jobs! The person on their website in the Hero banner got a job like 5 years ago.
I was thinking about this and how do you feel about sticky FAQ vibe thing that covers what to do about common questions like this, and then the mods can remove posts that don't follow that and tell people to ready the FAQ?
This sub is "politically" neutral so we can explicitly say don't go.
We can say, the market is very challenging right now and multiple times a day people come here seeking advice so you need to read through things before posting asking about which bootcamp to go to.
Curious why you think bootcamps feel like the obvious thing?
Like if you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer what would you do to transition? And I would think of SWE the same way.
You do have to learn some things on your own, analogous to studying for the MCAT or LSAT, but you want to learn some basics to take the next step.
Spending $20K for that is irrational. It was rational when people got jobs but it's irrational to spend that much on a Udacity-like course for 10X the cost.
Consider an adjacent job that is the closest to your previous work and leverage resources at the company to slowly transition over 3 years.
Choose the company that will support this transition and has the resources and pipelines.
Did your contract say that you can swap the course at any time or were there any cases where they could end support?
For example, if they let you switch if you are continuously doing it but if you disappear half way through and then come back 6 years later and what to change they don't have to support you?
I would check your agreement carefully because the rest of your conversations don't really matter unless the agreement is ambiguous or someone modified the agreement through a formal communication based on the rules in the agreement.