Regarding the viability of bootcamps

Good question, of all the people I work with (which as of 2023, require have signficiant SWE work experience already) about 1/3 or so when to bootcamps in the past and are on their second, third, forth, etc... job hunts. Here are my thoughts: 1. Bootcamps aren't useless for everyone in 2024. SOME people do get jobs. If you are in a different job, doing amazing, want to change careers, have a natural affinity to programming, have a strong network, live in a location with lots of SWE jobs, have 1+ years of savings, ready to work really hard for a few years and possibly have a few false starts (hire and layoff), they consider a bootcamp, there will be no other way to do it. 2. For alumni later on, people are unique so each person you talk to has their own path. Some are very successful, some are struggling. So it's hard to hear just one person story and make decisions based off of it. Definitely one thing to watch out for is recent alumni who are like I just got a job a few months ago, making like 150 K year. Give them time to settle into that job. Yeah, in terms of down the road some people do really well get promoted once or twice make a job leap to a better company and are on their way. Some people don't do so well, they're laid off maybe multiple times have a lot of fall starts get a little lost on what they should work on for the next job, I see a lot of people going into contract jobs or tech adjacent jobs, where they might be the only technical person on their team and they have struggles with progress, becoming a full-blown software engineer in the next job. The short answer is, it's definitely not easy. It's easy to celebrate a few cases of success, but things can change on a dime. I'm really on top of bootcamps that misrepresent alumni outcomes later on. For every, "I got a job a Google 3 years later!" there are 5 "I got laid off and don't know what to do now because no one wants to hire a laid off bootcamp grad". Maybe I'm biased because we help people a couple years into their career particularly with these kinds of struggles and I should probably disclose that by us very clearly. But really each case is unique and there are a lot of challenges and gaps and holes that bootcamp leave behind. If things go well, and you're able to find a first rule where you get mentorship support and fill in some of those gaps on the job or on your own through your own efforts, then you can slowly and patiently improve your standing. But if you don't even know what those gaps and holes are, it is very hard and I see a lot of people struggle to make sense of what to do next. 3. I wish I had more data on this, but it is definitely more common now than last year to see bootcamp grads get laid off after six months to even up to three years. And I think that's changed this year is it's not so much people being fired for being bad, it's actually people being let go because they're not progressing anymore and they're being replaced with people who have more upward trajectory. And the reason that they aren't progressing is because of those fundamental gaps they have that they don't really know what they are and companies are trying to run under the "year of efficiency" and are choosing not to spend more time, mentoring those people, and instead removing them. Anyways, I timebox my answers and these are some quick thoughts.

Sorry to hear. You're not alone. Feel free to DM me with more personal info about what city specifically and what roles. There's no magic answer right now but I want ot help give whatever advice I can and at worst it's useless haha.

We had someone join us who wanted to do Formation with no experience. I told them to go to Codesmith and come to Formation in a year or two. Instead they got a role at a startup in another country and came to Formation after 6 months. Person just got a job at Google in a SWE adjacent programming role. I don't think bootcamps work right now and would love to see something like the above. Training focused apprenticeships for people with zero programming training that are paid for via tax credits to big companies that pay for the person and more. The bootcamps could be more like level up tools to go from that to full time role. The anecdote above was a one off and not reproducible and a special person who is extremely driven with significant tech industry experience. People getting jobs tend to rely on some creative representation of past work anyways and giving those people real training work would be way better. The Obama administration tried to do this and Google was the first big tech to have official government registered apprenticeships https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/apprenticeships

Rithm has max 20 people per cohort and a dedicated super experienced teacher. It's more like having someone with more experience than Will Sentance (both teaching and in industry) being the primary instructor for your cohort. The content itself is a little different and it's a little longer I think. It's also 9am to 6pm every day instead of 9am to 8pm. A bootcamp choice is very personal to your circumstances. If you don't really need to learn anything and are going for networking and support, education doesn't matter. If you want to learn how to program, it matters more.

I agree with downvoting, the person did the right thing and I was wrong, and shouldn't have gone to Codesmith in their case.

I dont' see any single pattern. 1. Some people leave in the months timeframe (which often is not a good sign) 2. Some stick in the same role for a few years, fail to get promoted, and when layoffs happen they are the first to go. 3. Some do ok and even get promoted, but are still the first to go in layoffs 4. Some don't do so well and jump ship as soon as they can, and then keep jumping until they find a stable position long term, or learn enough on the job that finally find a position that clicks.