I am an OG bootcamp grad (2013) currently about to be a Director of Engineering. AMA.

Lots of questions but how about this to start on 1. Why are you no longer a believer in the bootcamp model? 2. Given your role in hiring and team building, can you give insight into why you think companies are doubling down on top tier computer science grads in this market and shutting out bootcamp grads? (Feel free to challenge the premise here if you aren't seeing that trend, not meant to be a loaded question) 3. Expanding on 2, do you see trajectory differences in bootcamp grads vs computer science grads and do you think there is an actual skill gap that impacts people later in their careers? Or once you have a job for a few years, the credentials are irrelevant?

+1 to number 2. Stanford and Berkeley did a lot of work to vet and evaluate people at a high bar for 4 years, and if a company hires those grads and those grads tend to do really well at the company, it creates a cycle of reinforcement. FOLLOWUP: **Why don't bootcamp grads have that reputation**? Like if people hire HR or Codesmith grads and they out perform Stanford grads, wouldn't that want to make the company go back and hire more HR grad? From my observations at Meta the Stanford grads just flat out outperformed on the job and it took bootcamp grads a lot longer to settle in and find their place. It's why apprenticeships became a thing.

+1 this - the fundamental problem with VC funding was that VCs saw high margin transaction - $15K, 12 weeks, massive value creation when people get high paying jobs - and invested in bootcamps to try to scale to thousands of people. Lambda School/BloomTech is probably the extreme case of this that raised over $100M and scaled to thousands of students in like a year. The problem was that to meet the VC growth expectations, these schools just hired more humans to scale to meet their targets instead of building the technology to scale that VC normally invest in. And being a human focused business, these bootcamps failed to recruit the top tier tech talent needed to build that technology who want to work on leading edge stuff, and they failed to multiply the original super dedicated intense founder. Which brings us to today, where the best bootcamps are smaller, founder-driven programs.

1. "Last year, 18 percent of Stanford University seniors graduated with a degree in computer science, [more than double](https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/25/stanford-in-the-2010s-trends-in-undergrad-majors-visualized/) the proportion of just a decade earlier. Over the same period at MIT, that rate went up from [23 percent](https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-awarded/2012-2013) to [42 percent](https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-awarded)." [source](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/computing-college-cs-majors/677792/) So not a ton of people but people are catching on.... because they are in such high demand 2. Since about the Google days but much longer I mean, it's not rocket science. I know a ton of Stanford students from my Meta days that I was friends with and hung out with on campus and not only are the people brilliant, but they spent 4 years learning from brilliant people, in all majors and not just CS, and they had a ton of internships at the hottest companies. It's not even remotely close. The best bootcamp grad who is destined to outshine a typical Stanford CS grad would still need time just to break even and investment from the company that hired them. It could be worth it for some companies, but for the top companies, it's cheaper to just wine and dine the Stanford students and give them $100K signing bonuses.