Feeling Concerned..

\+1. Formation isn't a bootcamp but I use my real name. The Rithm folks also always disclose, as does the Launch School founder. Disclosing and being transparent opens you up for attacks, but I would give a little extra credibility to those putting themselves out there :D (bias: I'm patting myself on the back here hahaha). I get attacked by a lot of new accounts out of nowhere and it's really damaging to the community.

I wish I had time to do an AMA or something but last time I did one it went crazy and took up my whole day. I would love to share my advice for bootcamp grads job hunting right now. Maybe people can comment on here with some questions and topics and I'll try to do quick write up of thoughts targeted towards the questions? I think I'm late to the party on this thread so I don't expect anyone to see this haha. There is hope! There are people hiring! But there are hundreds of millions of people in the country, thousands of miles apart, and wildly different experiences for everyone (which is why \~five anecdotal comments on Reddit mean absolutely nothing to make decisions off of) My background: 8 years at Facebook, 2009-2017. Intern -> E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Interviewed \~450 people. Mentored dozens. Number 1 volume code committer of all time (and still going strong https://github.com/mnovati) . Number 1 most internally followed non-management employee. Current co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), mentor and train early career engineers with work experience from \~dozen bootcamp backgrounds, 81% going to top tier companies, lots of experience.

It's not a single bootcamp, a single stack, a single pathway. That's why there are like 5 posts a day on here asking for answers and unfortunately, the questions have no simple answers. One of the biggest factors is pre-existing skill. If you look at the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, they are also the hardest to get into. Someone I was chatting with solved Leetcode-easy problems in their interview and got rejected by Codesmith. So if you are an autodidactic person who was able to self-teach to a Leetcode-easy level and get into Codesmith, you probably are employable before going to Codesmith. Someone who has never coded before and wants to get into the industry might come to this subreddit, look for the top bootcamps, and spend months studying to get in. If they have natural talent, they might get in, they might succeed, and they might credit the success to the bootcamp, but the real differentiator is their natural talent to self-teach the materials before the bootcamp. This doesn't mean the icing on the cake isn't critical to the value you get as a customer paying $20K, but I'm speaking to the underlying reason of success/failure overall. I think a lot of bootcamp grads who fail, went to the bootcamp for the wrong reasons and with the wrong motivations. There is no magic way to go from "programming seems really interesting to me, I've never done it but I'm ready to work super hard!" to "I have a really solid job" in 12-19 weeks. If you are coming in with extreme motivation, no related work experience, and a lot of hustle... it's going to take some time. I truly believe that anyone can learn programming skills to be employable at some job in some amount of time, but it might just be a really long time. Some people are mislead to think that they can "start a new life" in "16 weeks" making "$75K" and they sadly don't even know what they signed up for, but wanted those outcomes. I still believe this group can get there but it might take a lot longer and a lot more dedication. Finally, the in-betweens: people with some kind of relevant experience but maybe no real programming experience in the past. e.g. unrelated-engineering degrees, product managements, design, freelance work, CS degree but no prior jobs/internships. I need to dive into all the specific cases within this group, but these people tend to have some kind of network, able to answer behavioral questions from their experience, and tend to pick things up reasonably fast, even if they aren't the autodidactic individual who can learn anything on their own. This larger group tends to get jobs as well.

Yeah you could fall into either the last or the first bucket depending on how quickly and naturally you pick up the concepts while studying to prepare. I would aim for a top bootcamp yeah as the goal. Even if you are that last bucket, a top bootcamp will still help you get a job, and you still have a decent shot at success just by getting in! If you don't fall into bucket one, then it might just take you longer to ramp up and you might need to do more semi-structured courses before the bootcamp to get there. On the other hand if you fall into the autodidactic bucket, you arguably don't even need the bootcamp, and it serves more as a benchmark of your ability, rather than a useful tool. I'm speaking more to the other way of looking at things, like in aggregate, why some bootcamps have stronger outcomes than others. Higher bar = stronger outcomes, so if you get it, you presumably meet the bar, and presumably would have a stronger outcome.