u/michaelnovati replied · · edited
This is a good question... and you should ask THEM that haha because it's different for each of those 3 that you mention - and different for many of the "not best" ones as well.
For example, my company's (not bootcamp but sharing as example of what to ask) philosophy is you are giving us money you could spend on mentorship elsewhere and our job is to spend that money effectively so that you don't waste money on things you don't need. For example, college has super fixed schedules and curriculums, and you don't realize that every class you go to you are effectively spending money, and every class you go to that is generic and not adaptive to your progress is an inefficient use of that money. This could be a class moving so slow you are just wasting your time and money, or a class moving so fast you aren't keeping up and absorbing material as intended.
We work to this philosophy (and different programs will have different philosophies and different solutions) by: 1. using patented innovative technology to move you topics efficiently by vetting when you've done enough of a topic and can move on, 2. intelligently using small group sessions, peer sessions, and big group sessions, with dynamically selected people who are good mstches, so you don't waste as much money on sessions when you don't need them. 3. when you need them, you are mentorrd by very senior engineers - many paid hundreds of thousand of dollars or more at their day jobs, so that you aren't wasting that money when you don't need them.
We're not perfect and day to day many things can be improved (and are improved) but, trust me, those best bootcamps have a ton of ways to improve too, and regardless there should be a solid philosophy to answer your question and it should all be about you getting value for your money that you can't get somewhere else.
Things to watch out for are saying it's worth it because of the outcomes and the outcomes show why you should pay so much. **Run if you hear this without hearing about how the day to day training works**. You are not paying a bootcamp for an outcome. Look at Codemsith for example, you are paying them to have 6 weeks of lectures and 3 1 week projects and 1 3 week project, to get classroom lectures from instructors and have access to TAs to ask questions, and you are paying for lifetime access to former student mentors to ask for resume reviews, mock interviews etc... They have a giant office in Manhattan that probably costs $50 to $100K a month in rent. You are not paying for an outcome, no outcome is guaranteed, they have no partnerships to source jobs, you are not paying for a job. The fact the outcomes are "the best" is not what you are paying for. For all you know, they could just let in the best people who would do just as well at Springboard, and you are just paying that premium to them to cover their multi month long application and vetting process to let in the right people. If so, cool, they should tell you that, if it's something else, they should tell you that. If it's the investors want to get rich, they should tell you that (investors in tech companies get truly rich by taking a small piece of large pie of value added to the world for a long period of time, so this actually doesn't mean anything bad if true)
So with any program, to understand where the money goes, throw away anything they say about outcomes and figure out where the dollars actually go, as a key piece of understanding how different programs work. Use outcomes as a filter to narrow down to a short list of legit programs, but not a deciding factor between them.