Bootcamp Predictions for the rest of 2023 (Personal opinions based on public information and my understanding of the industry, disclosure: no material inside information, not stock trading advice)

Bootcamp Predictions for the rest of 2023 (Personal opinions based on public information and my understanding of the industry, disclosure: no material inside information, not stock trading advice) There has been a super negative tone in this sub this past week and I think it's going to continue as the job market remains tough and people question the value of their tuitions. It's certainly a departure from early 2022 when post after post was an anecdotal amazing placement about why the person's bootcamp was amazing. Just like you shouldn't give too much weight to a few people's super positive anecdotal opinions you shouldn't over value the negative ones either. I have stated in several places that I think 2023 will be a hard year for bootcamps and I wanted to elaborate more what I mean by that. As usual, I aim to be middle of the road and intellectually honest so some of these are positive, some are negative. **I would love to here if you have seen evidence for or against these points at your programs, in the comments.** # 1. Very small bootcamps will get by There are a number of small bootcamps that have a low student to teacher to ratio (< 20:1), the teachers are experienced instructors, and the overall schools tend to not grow that much year over year. I think these bootcamps will be stable through this year and experience little changes (other than maybe changes to help support job hunters). # 2. Career-changer enrollment will drop dramatically The typical person with a non-tech job who has been studying programming on the side on their own and is considering a big career change is going to hold off for a while before making the plunge. This is going to hit enrollment at "intermediate" or "advanced" programs pretty hard. If you do go to a bootcamp, expect to be placed with people who are much less experienced. # 3. Larger bootcamps will have a lot of changes, potentially layoffs/sales/mergers Large programs, particularly those owned by large parent companies, will have trouble hitting their growth targets because of 2. If they can't, they might have layoffs, program cuts, or sell the program entirely to merge it with others. As a first step, people will try to keep their jobs and make changes to increase efficiency, like merging instruction, larger class sizes, lowering support hours, eliminating programs entirely. As a second step, we'll see lowering the bar for enrollment and supporting a wider range of students, or layoffs to reduce program sizes. # 4. ISAs/Deferred Payments will be start to be replaced with upfront/traditional loans ISAs and deferred payments are great for students, but if you don't get a job for a long time, that means the bootcamp doesn't get paid for a long time. In the mean time, they have to pay thousands of dollars to acquire you (ads and recruiters), thousands of dollars to train you, and thousands of dollars in company overhead. Some programs will get their own loans with the ISAs as collateral to help pay short term costs, but ultimately if people don't get jobs, the money will run out. As a result, I expect a major shift to upfront payments and traditional loans and potentially new incentives and discounts to choose upfront options. # 5. There will be a surge in complaints and negative sentiment Many bootcamps have been considered "firehoses of information" and the teachers tend to not be super experienced educators or industry engineers (obviously many exceptions, but in general). There have long been complaints about bootcamp quality, but people don't know what they don't know sometimes, and when people get jobs, they assume whatever they experienced worked and credit it for the job. When people don't get jobs, all of those weaknesses will get blamed more. Things to watch out for are when people tell you to just trust the method, or senior students keep telling you your concerns about pace and quality are normal and to just stick it out. When you get a job, you see things like 'I was told to stick with it and it worked', and now you'll see things like 'I was told to stick with it and it was a giant scam'. # 6. If it's free there's probably a catch, watch out for people taking advantage I expect a number of people, many with good intentions, to come up offering help, advice, free coaching, free bootcamps, etc... If you are an experienced engineer making $500K at Amazon, Google, Meta, etc... what would you be doing right now. You might be working extra hard out of concern for your own job. You probably aren't going to offer free coaching, free training, or help to bootcamp grads, or people trying to get into tech. That doesn't mean something is a scam, because I'm sure some of these people are offering free help out of the kindness of your heart, but it could be a good intentioned person that will offer great advice for a few days/weeks before being pulled into their day job. # 7. The best bootcamps will adapt We'll start to see creative changes, some might end up failing, so be patient! Just like some programs did particularly well in the hot market by finding ways for people to have a leg up for better jobs, the best programs in 2023 will help people find ways of getting a leg up in a down market. Obviously a program can only do so much. Something to watch out for is a program that not's making any changes and telling you to keep doing the same old, same old. The challenge as a student is figuring out if the changes are a result of 2 above or if they are a result of 7, or maybe a little of both.

u/ludofourrage might have some comments about NuCamp, which relies on satisfaction and effectiveness ratings over placements outcomes. I feel pretty strongly that bootcamps shouldn't be judged by job outcomes and should be judged by education quality value for the cost. It will improve the quality of education, which is what most of the employees at the bootcamp work on. CIRR encourages bootcamps to be judged purely by placement rates and salaries and I think that not in a great direction. I think it's a piece of the puzzle and useful information, but not the sole way to judge a program. I also think bootcamps play a part in this by having the "wall of logos" on their websites and advertising the placements in bold. Stanford doesn't have salary numbers of graduates on their homepage in giant numbers like BloomTech does. I don't think career accelerators like Pathrise, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Scaler, Coachable, Formation (disclosure: co-founder) fall into the same bucket as bootcamps. They will have their own host of challenges this year but they should be judged by whatever they promise. For example, Interview Kickstart offers (as of last year) 6 months of support after a fixed program. Pathrise cancels fees after 12 months if you don't get a job (as of last year). Coachable only charges you if you make 100K. Formation has no length and keeps working with you until you get a job. Whatever something promises, they should be held to and judged by that. At Formation we are constantly adapting our messaging, training, mentorship, etc... on an ongoing basis as the market changes, and I hope it reflects a strong value for any market. People at career accelerators are often making large salaries with complex compensation and a difference of a few thousand dollars of salary miss the point if trying to compare them with forced disclosures. You have to do a deep dive into which experience is right for you.

Yeah I was a bit too hard on 6, I do know a number of people who genuinely have good intentions here and this might be overly deterrent to people from trying to leverage their networks - which is important right now. I also see many people get pulled into their jobs for a month here and there and their time ebbs and flows. I'm particularly concerned about things like Build A Dev that offer people free bootcamp options (while they refuse to refund former students) and offer people false hope during a challenging time. ChatGPT can generate curriculums and advice that sound great on paper but words are just words.

I've read the CIRR spec and the GRAD spec numerous times. The CIRR spec sounds like it was written by outcomes managers at bootcamps. It's well intentioned but it's not structured like a legal document, with definitions, consistency, and rigorous thinking for loopholes and edge cases. The GRAD spec looks like a legal doc with clear definitions and consistency throughout and looks like a lawyer looked at it. Tech Elevator has to reissue their H12022 CIRR report because of issues in CIRR worksheets, which I have also found have issues and misalignment with the spec (ambiguities) when I've looked at them. It's not terrible and it's well intentioned but people put way too much weight on it when making decisions.

Sure https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OJqKJSd4tBcG5j7sWQjVr5gGceSVAtmQ/view It's from Hack Reactor and Googling "galvanize G.R.A.D" might help find more too

Yeah I think laid off workers would find bootcamps appealing, but people WITH current jobs won't.