Threats and provably false information are against the rules.
If you want to report harassment use the report feature to report it to Reddit Admins so they can fairly judge the comments more fairly than us mods can.
If you have provably false information we do remove it if you can prove it's false, and my DMs are always open if you have something like that.
Hi, I'll DM you, I'm just concerned about integrity of the actors and not judging your intentions. We have a lot of odd behaviors on here and heavily rely on the automation.
Yeah :S. There are people it's still for, but it's a small number and there's no systematic program to do it.
My friend said something like 'The top 1% of people who go to college don't need college. College is for the 99%'.
A similar thing applies here. Bootcamps are structured and generic AND the top 1% of people who want to become SWEs don't need them either.
If the 99% did well enough to justify the existence, then maybe they keep going - dreams of recruiting the 1% to build reputation so that the 99% go and get generic outcomes.
But the 99% is basically not going.
So a school could exist as a special place for the 1%, but that kind of place is like a founder and a couple staff, not something marketing on LinkedIn.
Yeah think individual task replacement and not entire job replacement.
There's the old story about how ATMs replaced bank tellers, but that just created more jobs at the bank.
Well I've been to the bank recently and there were no tellers and no counter to even go up to. it was like a really weird experience but there were a lot of people working, selling and all kinds of things.
AI tools I like the first step where the same people have recognizable jobs and the gap will look really small compared to the second step.
I mean if we knew what it would be we would have it today!
Something is coming and the traits of it are that it will replace 95% of the individual tasks done by junior engineers today.
What those people do and what new jobs that unlocks I can guess, but we don't know yet.
There are two unrelated threads around AI:
1. AI as a tool - this is what you are talking about. Like Vim -> VSCODE. VSCODE -> Cursor, etc... Just like people using WYSIWYG coding IDEs in C# who can't write for loops, same problems with AI tools.
2. AI as a new coding paradigm. What if AI Agents write and maintain their own services and we don't really know or care how it's written. Right now we need AI to write code humans understand so we can integrate it and evaluate it. What if instead there is an AI system that takes a spec and builds a standalone system that fulfills the promised API and maintains it as the spec changes. This kind of architecture is not compatible with anything we have now and is a new paradigm it what it means to code.
\#1 started happening a year ago.
\#2 will happen over 3 to 5 years.
\#1 will keep SWEs employed
\#2 will kill off junior SWE roles and they…
Can you explain what's going on with the multiple accounts on here? Reddit has been flagging your stuff with it's algorithms and I'm having a hard time moderating because you clearly have multiple accounts, but I can't tell if it's bad intentioned or some kind of misunderstanding.
To sue someone you have to have damages of some kind. So like if someone lies and defames you and there isn't any tangible or even intangible damages, you probably won't get far.
BUT, if people are behaving sketchy and you diligently document and call them out with eveidence, it will catch up with them eventually.
Wall Street Journal: Prompt Engineering is already "obsolete" as job (link in body). This is an important indicator how fast the market is changing and why you need to be extremely skeptical of "Gen AI" and bootcamps pivoting from SWE to AI.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hottest-ai-job-of-2023-is-already-obsolete-1961b054](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hottest-ai-job-of-2023-is-already-obsolete-1961b054)
While the headline sounds bad, the article discusses all of the other AI-related jobs that are in-demand, but the overall lesson is to be super careful about pivoting too quickly into "AI" - both for students and for bootcamps.
RE: Prompt engineering "It was an expertise all existing employees can be trained on" according to one source in the article.
Instead of being completely doom and gloom, I want to explore ideas and solutions. Unfortunately, these all have problems, but…
I'll edit that last part of the sentence. I meant that is a separate thought like why did you do a bootcamp in this market? and not disagreeing that it's not a supportive message. but I want to clarify the that question was meant as a factual question or the sarcastic one.
1. If you have internships you are qualified. Look at University of Waterloo where they do six 4-month long fully paid internships over the course of their 5-year degree.
2. Supply and demand. If you're going to be paid millions of dollars a year like you claim, then you have to be delivering more than that in value to some company or to the world, or it's not a sustainable job. So let's say that your claim is correct that anyone who works hard enough can make millions of dollars a year in this field is true. then it would mean that there is a guaranteed path where people who work hard can produce that much value.
so let's say that you're making $5 million a year. which is $96,000 a week. which is $13,000 a day assuming you work 7 days a week, which I'm assuming you would given your argument.
I can imagine a world where put someone can produce $13,000 a day but if that was guaranteed…
I have had to amp up my rhetoric because bootcamps have been dying over the past year and some are desperately trying to cling on with marketing that misleads people.
I'm a "tell it how it is" person but I'm also a ruthlessly supportive person if you want to hustle hard with what reality has thrown at you.
I don't pat people on the back and support their delusion so they feel better.
If you accept reality and want my personal, thoughtful advice on what to do, my doors are open with tons of support.
Thousands of others are in your shoes too. You recently graduated so were you aware of the market when you signed up for the program. Why did you do it?
I wrote extensively about the bootcamp eras and such but this is somewhat common with successful people.
Many people who the bootcamp works for didn't need the bootcamp. Yet the bootcamp uses their stories to market to everyone, making it feel like "you could be next".
Based on ranking enrollments everywhere, I don't think people are falling for that.
But at the same time, if you are one of these people and don't realize it, you might not get the push you need.
Do you mind DM me the program confidentially? I'm a mod and I also collect news about the industry and programs converting to AI is one of the trends (App Academy, BloomTech full changed, and others adding AI).
Some are last ditch effort to not shut down. Others are trying to hit a new market.
Have you had internships? And if you haven't you should be focusing all of your energy on getting one. Doing a volunteer or free internship will be more useful than paying $20K to go to a bootcamp.
Work for free sounds stupid? Well how about paying $20K instead and getting less value out of the experience - like a 3 week long group project as your highlight!
I agree - two paths to people who get jobs:
1. Lie on your resume, hide the bootcamp, try to scam your way into mid level jobs
2. Bootcamps that have local or small scale hiring partnerships that provide people with transitional support (apprenticeships/awareness that the people are bootcamp grads).
Graduating a bootcamp and slapping it on your resume is absolutely not going to work.
I don't know the context of this, but I advise to read through a lot of content on here - there is no special secret bootcamp that no one knows about that gets people jobs right now.
It's not that no one at all gets jobs at bootcamps, the problem is that in most cases, most do not get jobs, and there are many people who had ZERO chance of it getting them a job that fall for the first Reddit comment that sounds like it's giving them THE path to the job.
Yeah I did a deep dive into a person who does this and found dozens of accounts and since they were all connected like a crime scene string map and it was insane. I'm scared of trusting a lot of things. And these accounts were warmed with tens of thousands of karma...
Yeah a lot of stuff gets blocked by Reddit and it's for programs that are rarely talked about making them sound like everyone does them.
Others are just brand new accounts coming out of nowhere deep on many months old threads adding slightly positive comments to them... much more sneaky.
Do you mean financial interest in people doing bootcamps or not doing bootcamps or just either way?
I would say I have a bias that more engineers == more customers but for bootcamp grads it's years down the road, and I don't financially benefit directly.
If the entire industry collapsed it would be just as likely that we move earlier career in several years as it would be that we benefit from bootcamps booming and producing more unprepared people.
So like as long as there are engineers I benefit in a sense. There could be some minor second or third tier impacts but it's not a major conflict.
I think a sticky poll maybe would be ok, maybe we do it monthly. We have a problem with manipulation though - so much obvious spam stuff gets caught by Reddit daily.
The purpose of the sub isn't to discourage people from going to bootcamps, nor is it to encourage. It's just to talk about them.
I totally see where you are coming from and I personally agree with the sentiment but I also don't want to make an official statement that they are objectively wrong.
I would recommend trying to get another job in IT support at a FAANG company and use internal resources to slowly try to transition to a Business Engineer or Applications Engineer role that works on supported vendor applications like Salesforce, etc...
Then try to use their resources to do a Master's degree part time OR use internal resources to try to learn programming.
Then try to switch internally to a SWE role (3-5 years)
It's indeed this bad in general, most bootcamps are shutting down.
The ones left are either:
1. Part of giant companies that run the back-office and they have made so many cuts to the programs they are barebones
2. Tiny programs with like 10 to 20 people at a time, run and led by the founder, that attract and accept only the right people.
I personally would only consider #2. And even in #2 people are constantly complaining that they are falling apart too. The only program I haven't heard complaints about is Launch School. The complaints at other places might not be warranted and maybe are frustration about the market - but the industry is hanging on by a thread.
Yeah that's part 2 and it's tough. Layoffs happen for all kinds of reasons. At Formation (not bootcamp), we see people occasionally get laid off and a number of people come back and pay again (with a discount) to do Formation again and do us this is a very strong sign of those people finding value.
It's very hard to have data about it though. Codesmith has a 'where are they now' report that is really not useful. I think it said 100% of respondents got promotions in 5 years - but who exactly did they send this to? What defined a promotion? I know for a fact people also got laid off, so how was that factored in?
Like not to be too harsh, like it's just a hard problem because when people leave, there's only so much you can do.
But +1 to the journey just BEGINNING with a job post bootcamp, and there will be lower lows and higher highs to come.
I do wish there was a better way though for…
Right now I'm seeing success be more about YOU than about the program. If you have a raw aptitude for programming, extreme grit and ambition and you will not give up, about 12 to 18 months of savings to live off of, and either a STEM degree or an arts degree from a top 20-40 college.
Then I would start looking into it as an option.
But otherwise, I wouldn't even start looking. I would still explore programming with free courses on Coursera and keep the option open down the road. AI changes things but no one specifically what jobs that might result in, and being good at coding can help at a lot of jobs. But I would be thinking 3-5 years and not a couple months bootcamp.
There are a lot of people who start Triple Ten, and then offer their referral codes (which they get paid $500 if you sign up) and then they disappear.
We're missing both software engineer placements AND software engineering refunds - there is a lack of evidence of both of those. Triple Ten's data doesn't give any insight into how many SWEs start and how many actually get jobs.
I watched the whole thing and the overall point was that entry level CS classes have 500-600 students in them and have upper year undergrads as TAs. Whereas "in the past" they claim that class sizes were smaller and the TAs were at least PhDs+.
I agree that there probably are sources of the people and it's other factors like MONEY lol, so framing it as a "shortage" is too vague if interpreted as a market shortage.
New documentary from PolyMatter on why "Learn to Code" failed 2008 to present. CS degrees/bootcamps, tying it all together, and bringing reality home. --> Highly suggest watching before transitioning into the industry.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bThPluSzlDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bThPluSzlDU) (I have no affiliation with PolyMatter)
**BULLET POINT SUMMARY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WATCH 25 MIN DOC (via AI - not me)**
**The Computer Science (CS) Boom in Education:**
* UC Berkeley saw a 1106% increase in CS graduates between 2011 and 2021.
* Projections based on this trend indicated unsustainable growth (e.g., all Berkeley undergrads becoming CS majors).
* Other universities like MIT show extreme concentration, with 40% of undergrads studying CS, dwarfing other fields like Chemistry (7 grads vs. 266+ CS grads at MIT recently).
* Universities have transformed into CS-focused i…
It sounds like you have a very supportive environment that acknowledged the reality of the juniorness!
The problems I see tend to be when people embellish their resumes and practice bullshitting interviews to get mid level jobs and then are treated differently and have to cover up the fact that they have no experience. I hear this from those people the most.
The b problem for many bootcamp grads is progression. They work so hard as juniors that people around them are initially impressed but for many, they are putting in 70 hour weeks and weekends to appear to be like 20% more hustle than everyone else.
Some people make it and all that hustle accelerated their career but others semi burn out or have trouble with the promotion or the promotion after.
If they join as juniors and get the support they need and the company is patient I think it can really work out well though.... a lot of big tech doesn't have that patience though.
Oh, yeah I mean at that scale the strategy is fund 20 and hope 1 works so they don't really care.
It's why not all bootcamps are equal and the motivations and intentions of the leadership is critical.
I completely 100% agree with this. But unfortunately because bootcamps hyped up their outcomes so much over the years and tied their identity to their outcomes, it's a hard ask to now tell everyone "now that the market has exposed the truth that the bootcamp was all about the mentorship the whole time and not the job, scratch the past 8 years and now trust us again with this new story".
So I don't know the exact insider details but their homepage started showing like a business to business product offer like AI chat customer support or something like that and it was like really weird like had nothing to do with bootcamps.
and then at some point later they changed the branding of that chat product and made it a separate website and it looks like career karma's just been running almost automatically because I think it makes a lot of money from search engine optimization and from referrals and stuff. and I guess they figured there's no point in taking it down, but I don't think it's actively being worked on as far as I know.
Career Karma pivoted and effectively is running with minimal resources to continue to make money for the AI customer service product they pivoted towards.
The content on it might be fine but the service itself isn't really active.
+1 bootcamps are for the smartest people who never connected the first earlier in life, not a backup option.
Try community college and get into the trades doing something you can be trained for and apprentice for that requires experience and not raw smarts.
RE: Problem solving methods, so we're on the same page:
I'm not trying to promote anything so I'll share the one that my company developed that I think is good (because I'm biased) and another one as well.
[https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
[https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview](https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview)
The idea is even higher level than specific approaches, and instead more about the logistics that people often overlook and rush through problems under pressure and crash and burn when they go down the wrong path.
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The specific techniques you are mentioning I call 'tools' and my view on those is you want to be an expert at using a few simple tools. The most experience handy-perso…
One of the best bootcamps has like a 40% placement rate within 6 months of graduating and many people are spending that time full time preparing.
So it will cost $22.5K tuition + $25K opportunity cost but another 6 months of lower income, and even then you aren't likely to get a job.
Then you look at who the 40% is and most of the people have adjacent degrees or work experience (e.g. mechanical eng, data eng, analysts, accountants).
So yeah it's a lot more expensive and a non trivial 50/50 chance you're going to lose $50K
This is my area of expertise - FAANG interviewing (DS&A, SD, behavioral specifically). Also disclosure that my company has fairly expensive coaching, mentorship, practice etc... for these interviews **BUT** I'm giving this answer with my personal hat on and not suggesting that.
The most common issue I see is people practicing LeetCode alone by themselves and fiddling with problems until the tests pass.
It can feel like the interviews are a game to beat, but DS&A is really about testing your problem solving process and communication of that process.
So some advice is to:
1. Follow a consistent problem solving process (you can google around).
2. Practice speaking out load through that process when you practice.
3. Don't underestimate easy and medium problems, don't skip too far ahead to hard ones.
Opportunity cost. It's one of the things that prevent socio economic status jumping. Rich people value it primarily and people living pay check to pay check value it at $0.
Programming skills are really abstract thinking skills that can apply to a lot of jobs, but still need to value your time.
If take a 12 hour a day 14 week cours = 1000 hour course and I would get paid $25 an hour in construction (avg california from goolging) = $25000 of lost income to do this course.
Hi!
1. Internships are like 5X the next point so it really is the biggest tip. But other tips are: network with past alumni as they might be able to help refer you, pay attention to companies or recruiters that come on campus (IRL or digitally) to recruit, try to be willing to move anywhere and consider jobs absolutely everywhere.
2. A MISTAKE was I was not remotely self aware of my communication in meetings and it was very bad, like absurdly bad. Like I was not good at energy and jumped too quickly to solutions without giving a chance for people to explore.
A MISCONCEPTION was that work would be really academically hard and raw intelligence was most important. Things weren't complicated but they were complex and success was about understanding and navigating the complexity. A corollary was that you I learned you could do just as well as the smartest people by our working them.
I wis…