A really good Udemy course designed for hundreds of thousands of people likely has more thought but into it than a bootcamp does, more production value, more consistency.
So why is it so much cheaper!?
1 - Accountability and 2 - Feedback
Why do people pay Weight Watchers or other social-based diet programs? Accountability.
Why do people pay personal trainers $200 an hour versus researching their own plan? Feedback.
This is about all bootcamps, not IronHack specifically.
u/matxi182 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Both of those points you mentioned are definitely crucial. We often end up paying more due to a lack of self-discipline. What do you think about combining an online program with a couple of hours of programming mentorship each week for feedback and accountability? This could pote
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Springboard is kind of this model. Their curriculum is licensed from Rithm School and Colt Steele and is kinddddda just like a Udemy course of his (i.e. recorded videos)
BUT they have alumni mentoring you aggressively to try to help you get through materials and evaluate your projects.
"The devil is in the details" because I hear mixed views on this approach. Having one dedicated mentor can result in your experience being dictated by how good that person is. And if they suddenly leave, you have thrash.
On the other hand, like a staff OpenAI engineer makes $1M a year, so if you want that kind of person mentoring you need a completely different model, as you won't get someone like that as a dedicated mentor.
Some programs try to have the super senior people do very large, one off talks to impart wisdom without too much effort.
I'm bias, this is not an ad and not about my company so I'm not going to say the name and it is NOT a bootcamp (it's for experienced engineers), but our approach to mentorship is to have a ton of senior industry mentors and a complex patented system to dynamically schedule around their availability and your availability (and try to handle all the crazy last minute problems that can come up with product and not humans).
This approach has downsides too - you don't have as much consistency session to session and week to week, and you'll work with a lot of different people with different perspectives. A lot more chance of last minute scheduling issues.
So again - this is all about execution and implementation and many approaches can work.