FE Developer with 4 YOE considering a bootcamp

Hi, I'm the founder of Formation and Coachable is a competitor so I want to disclose that bias but I'm trying to answer without considering that. So first off, Launch School you have to do Core first - which is meant for people starting out generally - and THEN you do Capstone. It's more of a bootcamp model + a long rampup period. If you feel like your FE work is like Web 1.0 web-dev or 'shopify store' dev then I would consider Launch School. If you feel like your FE work was real work (which it sounds like it is) then I would consider an interview/career-accelerator like Coachable. If Coachable is an option, Formation is an option too and I can explain more about it. Interview Kickstart is the third option. Pathrise used to be an option but it closed down. All three are different. If you want to stick to Frontend then I would consider Formation only if you want to do FAANG-Frontend, where we focus on the generalist aspects and less on the frontend (we have stuff but it's not as strong as our DS&A). If you want to change specialties, maybe Interview Kickstart. I personally don't love their model (1 4 hour lecture a week (super long, effectively recorded) + office hours VS Formation has an entirely dynamic schedule of small group sessions (\~5 people)) BUT they have more specializations Formation doesn't do. Coachable is a single person - Darek - so if you feel good about working with him as coach then consider it, but it's basically a coaching service hiring Darek as your coach whereas Formation and IK are more a scaled up tech-empowered multi-prong approach.

Yeah it's very small but they have a few mentors who did Coachable earlier on, legit mentors yeah. Formation is less 1-1 on demand and we don't have 1-1 on demand technical mentorship. You have 4 dedicated non-technical support members on our team, and you do 1-1 mocks, office hours, but most sessions are 3 to 6 person small group sessions. Interview Kickstart has even larger group sessions and then has some 1-1 thrown in there. All very different. Yeah Formation is costly if you are in Canada, so that makes sense and I think it could be an option but it's not a slam dunk if you are very FE oriented (because I think our SD prep is very strong and it's less relevant for FE). You could try it on the 1 week free trial and see but I would only consider if you are focused on the FAANG-level.

I mean there are definitely going to be more and more lifelong learning opportunities with AI, not just for Engineers but every job and it's going to be normal to continuously upskill. Boot camps though are putting you through a $20 udemy course with accountability and community and all these other things that you're paying like $10,000 for. and the problem right now is that those things are not worth the $9,880 because it's virtually impossible for a junior engineer to get a job right now with zero experience. So like if a boot camp is pivoting to try to Target more experienced people that might be okay too. but what I'm seeing from the top boot camps is really just the same old, same old boot camp curriculum that's a $20 Udemy course... or just free chatGPT generated And that is the dilemma because those boot camps don't have the experience to work with people who are more experienced and you can't kind of fake it or make up for that lack of experience. it's a fundamental problem for those boot camps so they're really struggling and a lot are just shutting down and moving on to something else. The worst of the worst are places that have made hardly any changes to their program and continue to target people with no experience and then start just flat out lying that they take you to mid-level engineer with zero experience. focusing on marketing what they already have and touting people who got overlevelled jobs from lying on their resumes as proof what they already have works, instead of actually making changes and improvements to the underlying program. So short answer. yes you're right that it really depends. but the long answer is that there isn't really a place for the typical 0 to 1 boot camp anymore.