What Do Aspiring Coders Need?

A job

We only work with people that have worked in industry for a while, and there are dozens of things those people thought were missing from their bootcamps. It's a harder question than it sounds because the common thread in the comments I hear is that people had NO idea what they didn't know when they graduated from their bootcamps. Like "Codemsith told me I did system design after one lecture to be at the mid level and I knew almost nothing at all about it" If you actually address all of the gaps, you would end up building something that looks like a college degree in CS, maybe some kind of 2 year long college-like program that would have to cost 5X the current bootcamp prices (I.e. what college costs)

Time and time again people have tried to lower costs and it results in a worse experience. I mean while we do interview prep now, the fundamental technology we are building could work for other areas. But it would be turning the entire industry on its head. The problem is humans. It costs too much to have humans in the picture to lower costs. What do the bootcamps do? Replace them with code and AI that is half baked and not as good but costs 1/100th the cost. I think GOOD product can do it but. But GOOD product isn't built out of desperation to cut costs when things are bad. This is my concern with these changes that happen post layoff at bootcamps. I would need about $1 to $4B of funding to make our product able to replace college CS degrees and VCs won't give us that money until we can prove that at a smaller scale. And this is the conundrum. Building product is an art that costs tons of money that you don't have (and need investors) and you need to do it during the success times, not the bad times. But times are good because the offering is good and you need to keep the value proposition equally high while making this investment. It's absurdly hard to do this and build an amazing product in this space while ensuring each and every person has a fantastic experience. I don't have all the answers and we make a lot of mistakes and have a lot of things to improve every day to make sure we offer a good experience, while simultaneously investing in a platform that changes the entire narrative of what it means to build skill. This is where innovation comes from. These intense pressure combined with talent and hustle will eventually forge new ideas that move the industry forward. And even under the right conditions, most will fail and that is the nature of a startup. Sadly, we haven't seen those conditions with even the best bootcamps. Just keeping the curriculum up to date and ship running takes all their efforts. And if you weren't baking in the above thinking from day 0, it's too late, and trying to keep a small and effective program going is the best outcome you can hope for. This is why a bunch of bootcamps talk to me, if you aren't doing this you need to work with people who are. I guess this is why a bunch of bootcamps use Canvas right. And we need wayyyy more products before the right one emerges.

I was being sarcastic, but people are paying bootcamps because they think App Academy or Codesmith will get them a $120K job in 12 weeks for $20 to $30K. So if that's what they are expecting, then what are bootcamps missing - well they aren't getting people jobs quickly anymore... haha. If people cared about HOW the bootcamp works they wouldn't have signed up in the first place to pay $20K to do a udemy-type course taught in large part by recent graduates.