You can do it with a bootcamp but the market is really tough and it will take a long time and additional effort post bootcamp.
I would consider a master's degree too and other part time options you can do at your own pace while you are working, and then be ready to go all in when the market is better for bootcamp grads or a specific opportunity arises.
Bootcamps can't consistently place people in this market, no matter how good they are. Launch Academy wrote a blog post on why they are passing indefinitely as a result.
That said, you could be one of the people who gets placed, just approach carefully and make sure you, and the bootcamp, are clear on the reality of the market.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I am curious, in your school do you consider your efforts to have failed if your students do not show up to class or in some other way fail to to do their assignments/work etc..? Naturally, I am asking about a student that does not do these things and does not get a new job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
We don't have classes or assignments so it's kind of nuanced how we manage people doing stuff.
We have dozens of ways to monitor and adapt to people's progress so people can do what they want to do.
We have an incentive to not waste money so yeah our product needs to get people doing stuff and improving.
If people don't want to do it anymore they can leave under a refund policy.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I will ask it a different way
If the student does not do a prescribe set of work, do you consider their inability to do well in interviews and land a new job a reflection of your training?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I think the mental framework of a school doesn't work at all for Formation and I don't feel like I can answer that.
Anyone who shows up is guaranteed to get to the bar, it might just take years for one person and weeks for another.
If someone doesn't show up and doesn't want to get to that bar, they will voluntarily leave, or we'll work with them to adjust to their news goals, if their new goals don't work, we'll remove someone.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
And if u have to remove someone , for them not doing work, is that ur failure ?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
We don't tend to remove people and I don't know. The handful of people we have removed are people that paused for person life circumstances and then never came back. People ramp up or down and go at their own pace, so it really depends on the pace the person wants to work at and our system supports whatever.
If Formation isn't a good fit and people are not progressing towards their own goals and we don't think Formation was effective that we have talked to case by case to leave and be partially refunded based on the activity the person did but this is also a single digit percentage non-generalizable case.
We don't have a generalized way of removing people.
That's why we have people with us for months and for years and it's impossible to provided high level aggregated data and stats that mean anything.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Ok.
If they do not do the work you have planned for them, is it a failure of you or your plan?
You can keep them in your org or not. That point does not matter.
They have not indicated that there is any personal reason for them not to "show up".
If you do not want to
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It depends!
The vast majority of people we work with are currently working, so the most common reason for rescheduling and changing roadmaps is last minute work situations and that's totally fine, not a failure.
There are 20 different reasons people can miss sessions. If someone doesn't have a good reason we automatically have a multi stage process of determining why, generally around making changes to the person's load and pace.
If people are bad actors and don't show up our product handles that by taking that into account when determining sessions.
It's a complex patented system we built, hard to explain, Forbes recently interviewed us and there is a write up there about it.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sir, if you want to say it is "hard to explain" I would normally ask you to explain it b/c I am a smart guy and i am sure there are other smart people here able to understand it. BUT this is not what I am asking.
i am not asking you to justify why people missed work nor the comp
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Ok I'll try to answer!
"If a student does **not** do the work you ask them to do" => then nothing really happens. They'll be given other things to do or perhaps asked to do those things again, we'll try to get them to do it later.
People can still apply for and get jobs because it's not binary. They might be 75% ready for an interview and not do a task and it's 74% ready and it doesn't matter, they can still get the job.
We work with people on interviewing for specific companies when they are ready for that company. So you might do a task to get ready for Google, and not do it because you have a Meta interview you don't need that task for and get a job at Meta.
If people fail an interview then we look at how they prepared. They might have failed practice interviews and chose to do the real one for personal reasons. There might have been factors outside their control. They might have practice the wrong thing because they misunderstood the loop coming up.
We review and try to improve any gaps and improve the product to get better signal and then we repeat.
We work with people for however long it takes to get a job, so if you fail fail fail we keep working with you until you pass, so there isn't really a failure state.
I don't know what our failure state is. We certainly aren't perfect and have a lot of things to improve, so it's not that their isn't one, it's just not directly related to doing work = get job, it's probably more related to day to day experience, like a mentor cancelling last minute or not submitting feedback promptly, and those rarer events that cause a bad experience.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I gave you the result to consider. "No new job"
* Student does not do work.
* Student does not interview.
* Student does not get new job.
**Are you taking responsibility for their lack of new job?**
I am asking you to assign the responsibility to anyone else
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
How does "no new job" happen I think is the point that needs clarification.
There's no end to Formation so everyone who continues to intend on job hunting keeps going until they get a job.
So the only way you do not get a job is if you change your mind and don't want one anymore, or you don't think Formation is effective for you anymore and you choose to leave early.
I don't really know who is "responsible" for you leaving early. If people want to be here then we work with you until you get a job and there isn't a failure case. But I think the answer is that it's the Fellow's responsibility if they do not get a job.
It's our responsibility to get you ready for a job as efficiently as possible, and if show up and do stuff but you progress too slowly then that is our responsibility.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You are again trying to frame the question in a way that I am not.
some one changing their mind, or someone wanting something is not something I introduced to this simple question.
Let me try again
* Student does not do work.
* Student does not interview.
* the reason and
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Unless they are on vacation on a pre-arranged pause, if they don't do anything for a week they are automatically flagged and paused and then we schedule a check in or contact their emergency contact and find them.
So someone can't just do nothing for 12 months. They can pause though for a month and come back later and that's not considered a failure case, it's very common for people to pause while launching a big project at work and then ramping up afterwards, or moving slower until they get promoted and then ramping up to change companies.
Every person has a team of 4 team members monitoring them and working with them, separate from technical mentorship.
We do NOT have lifetime membership. If people come back in the future they have to pay again to do Formation again. Formation ends when you get a job by definition (or otherwise withdraw)
It's strictly impossible for someone to join, do nothing for 12 months and leave and not get a job.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
ok so by way of it not being possible, you are not taking responsibility for that outcome?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's just such an odd thing to ask no like clearly with all this back and forth and me genuinely trying to explain, it doesn't really make sense.
It's like if you went to college and instead of covering how the more common day to day works, you are really focused on what happens if someone if someone doesn't show up to class for a semester and doesn't take the exam and whether they fail the class, or the school cancels and lets the student take an extra other class instead.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It is not odd at all. You are clearly comfortable assigning responsibility to bootcamps for their outcomes but you cannot do the same for yourself.
You dressing this up as "hard to understand" or somehow overly complicated to communicate falls on deaf ears. I will not attempt t
u/michaelnovatireplied·
We're not a school though, don't have a curriculum, don't teach classes, so again, the whole discussion doesn't make sense and it's grasping at straws to connect it.
If you can't accurately explain how Formation works then we shouldn't talk anymore about this until you do.
u/g8rojas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
No straws sir.
I have not attempted to describe anything, that is why I asked u a simple question that u would not answer .
Also… don’t try to sell me on the idea that u are not a school . I ain’t buying it. U can have the rest of group sold on that, but not me.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Why do you think that?
u/crimsonslaya wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Link to article?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Sure, sorry, should have linked: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/)
u/crimsonslaya wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Interesting. Seems a bit extreme imo
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I mean reading between the lines from everyone, things aren't going great and the top bootcamps aren't filling cohorts or are filling them last minute.
If there isn't demand to fill a cohort, a school has to decide - lower the bar? increase marketing costs (which can kill the company if they don't work because it's expensive)? give successful alumni free stuff to post reviews (like Codesmith is doing haha)?
Or you can accept the fact that it's not great for bootcamps and turtle up, shrink to the minimal size to survive. Don't make many changes, and try to ride out the market.