Coding Bootcamps Still Worth It?

Fair point on people's goals and that was lost in this thread for sure. A lot of people don't aspire to "FAANG" and I help a lot of people go to NOT-FAANG explicitly. I also appreciate the callout on "worse" and it's not at all pedantic. That should have been qualified since it meant "worse in most respects to top tier tech companies, such as compensation, empowerment of engineers, scale, challenges of work, career growth" but even then "worse" is still a judgy word and a mistake to use it. I use a definition of top tier as follows (which I mean by "FAANG") and I'll be clearer from now on: 1. Tech focused company - the primary business value is the technology or a product relying on the company's core technology. 2. "High compensation" - which varies particularly by region, but generally offers include some kind of equity or ownership participation (or equivalent), extremely strong benefits, etc... 3. VC-backed or backed by top tier investors. This is also a bit subjective, but generally has investors or board members at this level. Top meaning top 10 or 20/30 investors (which is subjective too) but the point is that these people know how companies grow and while they might push you, they also help you grow and scale through challenges that technology companies have. 4. Founders (or founding employees) who have top tier tech backgrounds. Not to sound arrogant, but my rule is 5 to 10+ years in a leadership or principal engineer role at previous top tier companies. This is important so the engineering team has the ethos of how top teams are run (both technically and performance/growth/hiring wise). It's also important for hiring and bringing in the best people. I would say a few hundred companies meet this bar and are not all "FAANG" but in the list of Codesmith alumni, there are very few percentage wise at these "top tier" companies.