Is the incredibly high tuition for the 'best' coding bootcamps commensurate with their quality + job prospects?

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.

I commented below but I strongly disagree that outcomes are a justification for cost without knowing where the dollars actually go and why. The biggest problem in the botocamp industry, that might even take it down this year, is that people are paying for a curriculum and instruction but think they are paying for the outcome. If you think this way, please, please, please do not go to a bootcamp before understanding what you are actually paying for and if you think that's the right thing for you. The outcome is a symptom of something the program is doing and you are actually paying for the "something" - figure out what the "something" is that you are paying for and why it's more expensive at some programs than others.

Sorry yeah I was aggregating. The 6 weeks is 4 weeks of super fixed concentrated lectures and another 2-ish weeks sprinkled across the other stuff. You might be the first person to say I've oversold Codesmith!! I always get yelled at for downplaying them and that Eric Kirsten told them Formation is a scam that offers everything Codesmith does for free for a lifetime... although that has subsided a bit since the market has tanked and I've worked with dozens of Codesmith alumni - and the vast majority at best love us (we have several "spotlights" written for people who wanted to talk about their story post-Codesmith) and at worst think it was maybe break even-ish, and not a single person I know of has said we offer what Codesmith offers haha.

They are worse! It depends a lot on the program. One of the best things to read is this from /u/cglee [https://medium.com/launch-school/evolving-landscape-for-software-career-transitioners-a-three-year-review-of-capstone-data-dbab52b6550c](https://medium.com/launch-school/evolving-landscape-for-software-career-transitioners-a-three-year-review-of-capstone-data-dbab52b6550c) . Launch School Capstone is a top tier program with high entrance bar, small program, but it at least shows the trends. Ada for example essentially paused entirely because their model was based on internship partners - who all backed out and hence they have no internships for people. Codesmith's enrollment pace has slowed (they used to be booked for months and are now interviewing days/weeks before new cohorts) but they are fortunately keeping a high bar and their outcomes remain strong (although my information shows them down POSSIBLY about 15-20%ish from the peak) Tech Elevator has anecdotally undergone some restructuring. They had AMAZING in person partnerships in smaller cities that appear to have slowed, similar to Ada, but they have aggregated some programs remotely online. Note Tech Elevator is owned by Hack Reactor's parent company.

Going back to your old job counts as a placement if the job is remotely related to engineering, i.e. "in field"

Yeah :( that's why I commented above, for someone with the wrong background paying $4K is NOT going to get you a better outcome.

Yeah I mean if they were truly transparent, they would be telling people now with their preliminary CIRR H2022 numbers that placements were down and proceed with caution about entering the industry right now.

1. results are released prior to audit and updated once audited with a statement from the auditors. Codesmiths H1 outcomes changed after the audited version came out, and then changed back with a correction from the auditors that they made a mistake. 2. I completely agree they shouldn't change their cadence and I said they should just inform people based on preliminary CIRR results that I know they have, that outcomes are as good, but in info sessions right now they are telling people everything is totally fine and that people are going to smaller companies. unfortunately the raw data is inconsistent with that so either the speakers don't have access to the raw data but somehow I do, or they are not being transparent.

Yeah specifically info sessions with the marketing/admissions people - same team of people

I'm intimately familiar with month to month and week to week trends and how many Codesmith people graduate each month and when their 6 month clock starts and ends and then even account for fellows, whose clocks are delayed for 3 months (or however long their fellow contract ends up being) I know for a fact that outcomes for CIRR H2 2022 are significantly worse than H1 2022, about 15 to 20% worse, being generous. July through August 2022 saw strong hiring at Amazon and Capital One, whom were filling out remaining headcount. The market was terrible in November and December as headcount ran out, freezes continued, and people decided to wait until next year. Because of the cadence, which you understand as well, that means only one or two cohorts from each coast were impacted super bad and had terrible placement rates that were somewhat cancelled out by the stronger earlier ones. January and February saw a little boost as people came back from vacation and a handful of non-FAANG companies released headcount for the new year. It was no where near July/August but at least some people were hired. The came March through May - which was like end of 2022. Then June/July 2023 things are picking up to Jan/Feb levels but FAANG is hiring again and smaller companies are starting to fail. Some of those people hired in H1 2023 are actually being laid off from those smaller companies failing... but it's quiet because those.are small companies that aren't in headlines and it's a few people. So for CiRR H2 2022, the best cohort is like 70% and most are around 50%, and it levels off to about 60 to 70% or a 15 to 20ish percent drop. How do I know all this? I track Codemsith specifically because and have an extremely larger amount of data on them, but I also see hundreds of people interview every month at hundreds of companies and see interview and offer trends in a very structured way.

Sorry I meant a 20% drop, i.e. 60ish %, I say relative because my data is better for trends at Codesmith and not absolute values.