New WSJ Article about tech jobs shows one chart that perfectly tells the story of bootcamps rise and decline and how it's not getting any better for early career engineers...

New WSJ Article about tech jobs shows one chart that perfectly tells the story of bootcamps rise and decline and how it's not getting any better for early career engineers... SOURCE: [Tech Jobs Have Dried Up—and Aren’t Coming Back Soon](https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-jobs-artificial-intelligence-cce22393) This chart is pulled from the article and sourced from ADP as specified below. https://preview.redd.it/64urvj4yr3qd1.png?width=1472&format=png&auto=webp&s=542c07126ff96bdde9679fcee77422e7c8cbdc81 This chart tells the evolving story of bootcamps over six years and suggests it's time for the industry to move on. **2018**: The baseline year, marked by stability in a post-Cambridge Analytica tech market. **Bootcamps**: Operated largely under the radar, selecting students carefully, holding in-person classes in major tech hubs, and maintaining direct hiring pipelines with companies. **2019 - Early 2020**: FAANG companies saw massive growth, hiring anyone who could code to meet demand as their market caps soared. **Bootcamps**: Benefited from the shortage of engineers, experiencing exponential growth (2X, 3X, 4X year over year), as people flocked to bootcamps for a fast-track to lucrative tech jobs. **2020**: Initial layoffs due to COVID-19 hit, but the demand for online software kept jobs relatively steady. **Bootcamps**: Lost their in-person pipelines and were forced to transition to remote models. **Early/Mid 2021**: As the world adjusted to COVID, layoffs persisted but the shift to remote learning stabilized. **Bootcamps**: Faced challenges—though top-tier graduates still secured good jobs, weaker programs or those that grew too fast started to collapse. **Mid 2021 - Early 2022**: With the exuberance of a post-COVID recovery, the job market returned to pre-2020 levels. **Bootcamps**: The successful bootcamps continued to place graduates well, creating a false sense of effectiveness. Yet, some bootcamps quietly disappeared from CIRR (Council on Integrity in Results Reporting). **Mid 2022**: The post-COVID hangover sets in. Layoffs increased, revealing that the pandemic-fueled growth was unsustainable for many companies. **Bootcamps**: Started failing en masse. While the public hadn’t noticed, on-the-ground complaints and whispers about bootcamp outcomes began to grow. **End of 2022 - Early 2023**: A temporary hiring bump due to new year budgets brought hope to the struggling bootcamps. **Bootcamps**: Promoted this bump as a sign that "things are getting better," but many were fighting for survival. **2023**: Layoffs continued to mount, with no relief in sight. **Bootcamps**: Realized that things were not improving. As results worsened, CIRR delayed releasing data that showed just how bad things had become. **2024**: Though not published yet, I expect the job market index to rise. More jobs are opening up, but layoffs are also continuing. While the market is turbulent, it’s neither entirely good nor bad. **Bootcamps**: As the reality of 2023's struggles becomes clear on the ground and through word of mouth, bootcamps are rapidly losing public confidence. Only a few bootcamps, operating at drastically reduced sizes, remain from their 2018-2020 peaks. **Looking Ahead**: The bootcamps that stay focused on software engineering may stabilize, but it’s clear the bootcamp industry will never return to its former glory. I’ll share more thoughts on the future and the impact of AI in my next analysis.

Oh sorry, WSJ is one of the only places I pay for because they have extremely good stuff.

I agree if you are an ML engineer with a PhD or Master's. If you learned to use AI tools in 2 weeks assume you are.already obsolete because the AI itself is already beyond your capabilities. I think it's going to take people a lot longer (years) to break into the industry and find a stable job going forward.

Bootcamps job right now is to identify the special unique people in this world that will be great engineers but didn't realize it until after their traditional non-engineering schooling. This sub has a purpose for helping those people get the ball rolling.

Agree with GoodnightLondon, those other jobs don't require or test for AI skills and you are expected to figure it out in the job. General Engineer 5 years at Google, zero AI experience will be chosen over Bootcamp Grad with two weeks of AI who knows what RAG is ... even for a role that is working on AI product!!!? I surveyed about a hundred ex Meta engineers about this and 90% said they don't care about AI skills when interviewing general engineers, even for product using AI.

I agree with that. I strongly believe that diversity has a very broad meaning in general and the industry has a long way to go, but starting with just gender identity, big tech is still about 75% men and 25% women and moving that needle even just 1% is crazy hard. I do see reports of stem being more 50/50 in school now and I think it will take a long time for the ratio to be representative. And in the meantime, programs like Ada play a critical role in helping people who are already past school bridge the gap. It actually disappoints me tremendously that a lot of intense bootcamps have very poor gender ratios. Women are still primary care givers for children, so I don't think the traditional 11 hour a day 6 day a week bootcamp is doing anything to help.

For WSJ the article has a lot of one off anecdotes like the ones you quoted, but the data is legit and specifically Software Engineer jobs on payroll and not job postings like many other analysis.

Yeah it could go back up for sure and I hope it does! The main point I'm trying to make which I didn't explicitly call out any specific programs, is that this chart is showing very clearly what the reality has been since 2018 and people can compare that to them for themselves to the marketing that they're hearing from specific boot camps. The boot camps know exactly that this is what the market was like and they see their numbers fluctuate with the market. I talk to them and I know this. and I think that this is why a lot of bootcamps have changed their tune in the past year or two about how they market themselves and the message that they make. for example, all those guaranteed jobs that you heard about in 2020 at the peak went away and the marketing message changed for a lot of programs. and I think that people should be trusting programs that have been transparent with them and should stay away from programs that have been not telling them transparently what's going on.

Skews big tech yeah and big companies yea. Meta, Amazon etc... I would be curious if Gusto publishes that too. Pave also knows a lot about startups as it sucks in Gusto and Rippling.