Really thinking about a career change, is a coding bootcamp worth it ?

Hi, I have some comments that I'll kind of put in bullet form to be a bit more succinct * A lot of people move from accounting and music into tech, some of the abstraction in doing books comes in handy! * If you are still working full time as an accountant and are not in a rush, a part time masters at top 10 CS school could be good and open up "new grad" opportunities via the school. If you really have like 1-3 years, and get get into a truly top tier masters program, this might be a good option. * There are no bootcamps that have a high success at placing a MANGA. There are people here and there, but they are a fairly small percentage right out of bootcamps. People do tend to make it to FAANG in a couple years+ and that's a more realistic goal. Mid-tier and lower-tier companies are the most common outcomes. At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, NOT recommending for you, discussing because of FAANG connection), we work with people with 1+ years of work experience already to accelerate that transition to FAANG for people who started out lower. I'm obviously bias, but I think most bootcamp grads with 1 year of work experience under their belt can get to FAANG-level with Formation's help. We updated our numbers last week, just under half of our engineers have done a bootcamp in the past, and 81% of all people placed were at top tier companies (25% were at literally the five F-A-A-N-G). So we tend to see that people from bootcamps need a bit of real work experience before being FAANG-ready for the most part. So to summarize: it's possible to get MANGA jobs out of a bootcamp, you'll hear about a handful of Codesmith people going to Amazon and Google, and a couple of Hack Reactor grads going to Dropbox. Each person has a unique path and the overall truth is the vast majority of bootcamp grads don't go to FAANG directly, with zero starting work experience. * That said, a "top 5" bootcamp is a good way to reliably get a foot in the door first job and might be a lot faster than a masters program. In my opinion, the ideal bootcamp target for most people is apprenticeship job at a top tier company. Sure, you make like $100K for that first 6 months or so (which lowers the bootcamp's outcomes reports), but you'll learn faster and transition into full time faster. Super competitive but that to me is more ideal than a bigger salary at a 2nd/3rd tier company. Codesmith advertises mid-level/senior jobs that is a bit misleading (they aren't using FAANG-canonical leveling) that I strongly disagree with, and if you go there (it's a top school definitely worth considering) I would still recommend the above strategy: target apprenticeship at FAANG.

Yeah you have to watch out for programs that have a low entry bar and are very expensive. You are looking for a "real" masters CS program. I'm not up to date on what the schools offer since COVID and how things work. I know in the past people have done part a time masters at Stanford yeah. If none of them offer a legit masters now then I wouldn't do them. GTech's online program is decent but I don't consider in this bucket yeah, like I would be on the fence between that and a top tier bootcamp. Depending on goals and you.

There are two cases I've seen frequently with open source: 1. Hack Reactor people list a section under "experience" called "Personal Projects" that is a list of their personal projects on GitHub 2. Codesmith people list a section under experience called "Open Source Projects" which are personal projects similar to Hack Reactors and not really open source. Most people separately list a larger group open source project as "software engineer experience" for a "company". These projects aren't really open source projects as almost all have no outside contribution and are not worked on after Codesmith (you can look at the GitHub histories for all of them yourself). The projects are great group projects but they aren't paid and slightly controversial... I know a lot of people on the hiring side that fell for this trick in a resume screen and thought the people had paid work experience and realized in first calls that this was not real work. I'm not sure why these group projects are not also listed under "Open Source Projects" along with their other projects. EDIT: this is getting downvoted, want to make it clear I'm not badmouthing Codesmith here - this is just a controversial point in the industry. There are pros and cons to this and I understand Codesmith staff and students might feel defensive, and I also think there are positives to this approach, but there are people in the industry, for example [this thread,](https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/) outside of Codesmith and outside of this subreddit, that don't like the way people portray the OSP projects as well. Two sides to everything.

It's an acronym that stands for Facebook (or Meta) - Apple - Amazon - Netflix - Google. Some people use it to mean those five companies (knows for strong engineering cultures, high compensation, and impactful technology), others use it to mean top tier companies in general, such as Microsoft, and others. Generally companies that have the top engineers working at them, have engineering and product driven cultures, have the highest compensation, and have jobs with the largest impact. Not everyone wants to work at companies like this, or they don't want to work there for their first job. Others do. Others want to work there first, and then want to move on to other companies. But in the current market, most people see having these companies on your resume at a minimum as a golden ticket to open doors and extremely high compensation that can be life changing. I use a Hollywood analogy sometimes. It like breaking into the movie industry by writing/directing/producing/starring in a huge blockbuster movie, and then having a strong network and experience to open new doors. Other people might work their way through the industry over a long time, others might hit it big and then spend the rest of their career on passion projects, others might stay in blockbusters for their whole career, others might spend their whole life on passion projects and have a solid career without any big blockbusters. In this analogy bootcamps help you move to Los Angeles and get your first job in the industry and Formation helps you get a job on a blockbuster movie.

You are correct, it's incredibly hard and competitive, and you likely won't get one, but that's the most broadly approachable level of FAANG job from a bootcamp if you have no experience. On a case by case basis you might be able to get an entry level FAANG job as well, so I would need to give personal advice. I know a bunch of people at Codesmith, App Academy, and Hack Reactor, spend significant amounts of time studying Leetcode on their own to aim for entry level FAANG jobs, but I'm specifically talking about the preparation that the programs themselves provide.

Yeah Amazon is the most approachable FAANG company, but you have to find the right team, right manager. Sometimes if it's a little too easy there's a catch, and some teams at Amazon have a culture of quickly correctly for hires that are not performing well. Amazon overall is a fantastic company though and I highly recommend people give it a shot out of bootcamps. You typically get an OA first that is fairly hard DS&A problems and if you've been studying for a while after your bootcamp you have a shot for sure.