u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Hi, This sub stil has a lot of activity and has grown 5X over the past couple years in membership. BUT the tone is a lot more negative.
First: why no success stories?
The top bootcamps have had lower placements rates for 2023 grads. The odds of getting a job are lower, and the odds of getting a SWE job, rather than a SWE-adjacent job, have gone down as well.
So if you are one of the lucky ones, it's likely you had an arduous journey and it's likely may of your cohort that you found just as talented as you are seriously struggling to get a job, and you aren't going to Reddit to brag about your job.
To make it worse, I've been seeing more layoffs of bootcamp grads down the road, compared to CS grads. So just getting a great job out of a bootcamp isn't the end, but the base of a taller mountain.
... and those a few years out and in good shape, graduated in the boom times and it's hard to related for 2023-2024 grads.
Second: bootcamps shrinking.
We've seen layoffs, shutdown, and pauses. Codesmith laid off 1/3 to 1/2 the staff and reduced number of cohorts from 4+1 to 1+1 and still can't fill cohorts. Rithm had a couple layoffs. Launch Academy paused entirelly. Tech Elevator laid off a bunch of staff after merging with Hack Reactor and Hack Reactor laid off a bunch of staff when shrinking offerings. Turing had layoffs. Epicodus shutdown. 2U/Trilogy's market cap is almost $0 now. App Academy's long time founder and CEO stepped down. BloomTech cutoff some of it's programs and almost all the execs have left.
Conclusion: clearly it's a brutal time for bootcamps AND for bootcamp grads, Far fewer people are going. Far fewer people are getting jobs.
We can't pretend this isn't reality. Those who do will fail.
But if step 1 is acknowledging reality, step 2 is dealing with it.
The world needs more engineers, it just doesn't need more bootcamp grads.