Another CIRR school pauses enrollment due to the market. Bootcamps have to face reality or they will not survive 2024. If you are looking at bootcamp that doesn't warn you about the market for bootcamp grads, run for the hills!

Another CIRR school pauses enrollment due to the market. Bootcamps have to face reality or they will not survive 2024. If you are looking at bootcamp that doesn't warn you about the market for bootcamp grads, run for the hills! SOURCE: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/) Selected Excerpts: >While our graduates are of high caliber, there is a difficult cognitive leap for hiring managers to overcome when comparing our entry-level graduates with established engineers affected by recent layoffs. With such an ample supply of the latter, it leaves the former at a strategic disadvantage. Even with the best available preparation, there is no substitute for work experience. > With so much seniority in the job market, it's difficult even for the strongest of graduates to find a job. Despite this market downturn and adverse hiring environment, larger competitors still continue to speculatively fill cohorts. Make no mistake, bootcamps survive on tuition dollars, and without students, there is no revenue. With no revenue, there is no business. They will continue to enroll students regardless of market outlook, and we think that's not in the best interest of the bootcamp student. Given our commitment to outcomes, we are pausing code school enrollment until the market improves, and the *whole product* can be a reasonable certainty for our graduates. COMMENTARY: - I appreciate the openness about the thought process behind this decision. - NO ONE IS ABOVE THE MARKET. We saw Rithms CEO be super transparent [here about the market](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOZc1XQ0UE8) and we've shee Launch School's founder be super transparent [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLKHZYX8D78). - Codesmith is absolutely not acknowledging the market openly. They are giving successful alumni free stuff to flood Course Report with reviews, their CEO is touting 'over 15 offers in a week and over an offer a day'. They laid off about 1/3 to 1/2 the staff but only spoke about positive things in [this post](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/tag/full-time-immersive) and while Launch School and Rithm are talking about challenging results in 2023, Codesmith instead brands their drop is results as ["Outsized Opportunities, CIRR and Other Stats That Matter"](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/outsized-opportunities-cirr-and-other-stats-that-matter) **Should you go to a bootcamp in 2024?** MAYBE! It highly depends on you and your unique situation. But be careful! Don't trust a single review, anecdote, "friend", alumni, staff member, **OR CIRR RESULTS** as a decision making factor in 2024. Seek out a bootcamp that is open and transparent about **how** it works and helps you figure out if it will work for you.

Codeup

Ah ok, I see and agree, I don't know any other programs that just paused their entire enrollment, I meant paused or closed. I think Codesmith pausing enrollment in specific programs and Hack Reactor shutting down some programs is similar to "pausing" too perhaps.

I can speak for LeWagon but Codesmith is pride and not greed from what I've seen. They genuinely believe they have a unique and special program and anyone criticizing it is jealous or a competitor trying to leech off of them. The CEO has FrontEnd Master money and could do a number of other things to make more money. Their founding advisor could do a lot of other things and does Codesmith because he likes helping people. Admitting they aren't better than the market is a pride thing. I would love to see them say "the market is impact us and we have slowed down to save money, were trying to break even and pour every penny we can into Codesmith but we can't do as much as we wanted to and we are focusing on offering one incredible cohort with a minimal team". They still have far too many staff members. You don't need more than one outcomes person to manage a few offers a week and 30 people graduating a month. You don't need more than one admissions person for 30 people a month You don't need more than one coordinator You don't need more than one marketing and community person. You don't need three HR people. They probably have 3X as many staff as they need, and they prefer to pay them out of loyalty and pride than use their salaries to invest in Codesmith directly. I e many of these are operational people not generating permanent value for Codesmith rather than R&D who do.

I haven't worked at any bootcamps. My partner ran a free in person bootcamps for 2 years that I helped with, but that's it. I work with people who have graduated from a ton of bootcamps though and have a very broad lens

I know a number of bootcamp founders/CEO and have talked to people about these things, structure of a cohort, unit economics, etc... These are just my personal opinions based on my experiences, so take it with a grain of salt, but I think it's an informed opinion.

That's great and you are both lucky and probably have the other skills and situation that are more correlated with getting a job. The Launch Academy argument is that in this market No bootcamp can guarantee or consistently get people jobs, so they think it's not responsible to admit people and take their money. that doesn't mean that no one will get jobs. In fact in some places anecdotally, it's a couple of people but it can be as high as 30 to 50% of the cohort right now. But that's really important to understand what kinds of jobs and how. in the past there was a little bit more consistency and common practices. Right now it's kind of a free-for-all with people getting all kinds of jobs all over the market and at all kinds of companies. The most ambitious people are going to find a way through to a job, but there isn't a consistent and reproducible method that a bootcamp can teach right now to do that. That means on an individual basis you might get a job. but based on Launch Academy's argument, it would be equally deceiving to take your one outcome and present it as if everyone doing the same boot camp would have the same outcome (not that you said that, but explaining Launch Academy's position by analogy).

Sorry I didn't realize the wording of that was poor at the time but think it was now. I meant the CEO, the advisors, etc... have other ways to make money and could do number of other things so my theory is they are sticking to Codesmith's current narrative out of 1. loyalty and 2. pride. I didn't meant to imply Will was making money from FrontEnd Masters directly - just that it's evidence that he could make money teaching in other ways.

It really depends on your goals. The common thing making you less suitable is if your goal is to make money and you don't have a passion for programming or engineering or problem solving. This is the easiest one. If someone says they are considering nursing or engineering for the money, then I say to watch out. If they say they want to do cyber because they heard the money is there, I say to watch out. The market is selecting not just people that hustle, but also have an inclination to programming. If your goal is to just learn in an accelerated way, not necessarily get a job, not learn EVERYTHING but get a structured intense push with accountability. Then a bootcamp might be something to consider (and not the only thing).

You have to do that :D. I would look into all of them with a skeptical eye (don't fall for marketing) and try to se if any would really work for you day to day.