
Let me give you a list of the top scams coding bootcamps use to steal your money - ZeljkoS
https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069
======
_JC_Denton
I know the author would chalk my experience up to 'survivorship bias', but my
bootcamp experience was life-changing and 100% positive. I don't know if the
quality of bootcamps have gone down, but I did one ~5 years ago, and was very
impressed by the talent of my classmates and felt lucky to be with them.

Backgrounds were extremely diverse, from Ivy-league graduate math majors to a
former horse trainer. The graduation rate was around 85%, and among the
graduates, the 'true' job placement rate was probably around 90%. I was able
to hit the ground running in my first software engineering job at a well
funded startup, and was on par with other fresh cs degree graduates. Over the
next few years I was the first among that class to be given a team leadership
role.

Looking at LinkedIn, the other graduates from my bootcamp seem to be having
their own successes at FAANG jobs and other strong positions. While I believe
my experience was somewhat typical for my bootcamp cohort, (like college) I
think quality can vary greatly based on the bootcamp, and I am sure some are
bad deals in the ways Zed has outlined.

edit: For those who are wondering if the successful bootcamp grads would have
been successful anyways without the bootcamp - 100% no way for me. I had
already been self-studying programming before the bootcamp and it was a night
and day difference. It would have taken years of self study to learn what I
did, and with a good chance that life would have derailed me along the way.

~~~
kevingadd
The most obvious way to unify your experience with the details in the original
thread is that they have gone down in quality over the past 5 years. Given the
massive number of new bootcamps that have launched (and shut down) it seems
natural that not all of them would be up to the quality standard you enjoyed
at the time.

~~~
pmiller2
That would suggest that choosing a bootcamp that was around 5 years ago would
be a far better choice than one started more recently.

~~~
barry-cotter
Alternatively you could look at quality directly instead of using a proxy. At
least use a better proxy, like length of program.

~~~
pmiller2
And when do you look at quality directly (from the outside, as an applicant),
given the way some programs misleadingly report their placement numbers?

~~~
barry-cotter
You look at audited placement numbers, consistently measured across multiple
boot camps.

[https://cirr.org/](https://cirr.org/)

> CIRR standards are transparent. We've fixed the problem of schools
> manipulating or hiding their outcome data, by requiring that for CIRR
> members, the outcomes of every enrolled student must be reported in a
> single, simple, clear report. How many graduated on time? How many accepted
> a full-time job in the field for which they trained within six months? How
> many secured part-time jobs? Did the school itself hire any graduates? How
> many students jobs are in fields outside of what they studied for? What are
> the salaries of grads who started jobs in their field of study? In addition,
> schools must annually have their numbers – and the records they keep to
> prove them – verified by an independent auditor.

~~~
pmiller2
Seems reasonable, although that would limit you to just the handful of
programs that report to CIRR. What about the rest of them?

------
sky_rw
In my previous roles as lead developer at startups in NYC and SF I interviewed
roughly 30-40 bootcamp graduates looking for RoR jobs. The bar for a jr.
position was extremely low and still none of them were able to pass. Many knew
they course material very well, but as soon as you threw any real world
problem that required any deviation from their established lane they
completely floundered. Eventually we just started filtering out anybody with
that background.

Saddest thing is I keep hearing stories of people saving up huge amounts of
money to go to these bootcamps with this dream that they can jump from a
30k/year retail job to a $120k/year SWE job with a 4 month bootcamp. I just do
not believe it ever happens.

~~~
gremlinsinc
They'd probably be better off doing FreeCodeCamp, and then spending 1 hour per
day on ProjectEuler, blog about their algorithm's, and post 1-2 tutorials per
week for 6 months. Eventually they'll cement their understanding as well as
get people to 'trust' they know what they know.

~~~
cjaro
FCC is how I got into the game. Someone pointed me in that direction from
reddit. That was in late 2015. I went to a bootcamp in the midwest, one of
only two or three. While I certianly didn't experience any of the hazing or
punishment, per se, the long days and vague projects that don't necessarily
teach how to solve problems hit home - I learned how to google well pretty
early on and I'm glad I'd been teaching myself prior to the bootcamp because
holy hell, it was hard and utterly relentless.I have a great job now, but
that's after two years of dipping in and out of positions at other companies
because I had no idea what to expect out of a workplace in regards to what I
wanted and needed (environment, dev setup, peers, mentors/teachers, remote
work, etc). the last three years of my career (graduated April 2017) have been
a wild ride and not an easy path, but it's certianly taught me that I am
resilient and can find a way to survive.

~~~
soneca
I thank freeCodeCamp for my career too. I spent around 3 months in 2017
studying full-time solely through freeCodeCamp. Then another 5 months building
my own products based on tutorials and official documentation. Then got a good
job as a frontend developer.

------
_bxg1
Setting aside all of the anecdotes for and against bootcamps in this thread
and the one on Twitter, consider this: compared to the rest of the job market,
software engineering in 2020 is a ridiculous gold rush, no matter which way
you slice it. And bootcamps are a vague-but-lucrative new business sector that
capitalizes on this reality with hardly any regulation or accreditation
system.

Historically, whenever there's been a lucrative new business opportunity with
little oversight it's almost guaranteed to be _rife_ with corruption and
scams. That's not to say that legit bootcamps don't exist - my own partner had
a successful experience with one - but the marketplace is a minefield of
potentially life-ruining opportunities, and the only way to tell good from bad
is through anecdotes and he-said-she-said. That's a big problem.

~~~
carapace
Yeah, a gold rush, and old SF hands know the way to cash in: stay in town,
sell shovels and Levi's.

~~~
vsareto
Old SF hands might be cashing in, but many people are getting >$150k-$250k
jobs out of it. The shovel analogy is stretched thin. It's more like selling
gold shovels at this point: both sides get rich, but one a little more than
the other.

~~~
carapace
Look at the risks.

------
Jaygles
I'm a bootcamp graduate who successfully inserted myself into the market and
within three years (2016 - 2019) gained a senior title at a large company
(~2000 employees) as a software engineer.

I attribute my success to having a computer science background from being a
gigantic nerd my entire life (first code written was QBasic in 3rd grade and
you KNOW I was at every lan party in high school) and luck (Had someone
willing to hire me to maintain small fry websites for a year which helped my
resume quite a bit although at a poopy salary).

Both my brother and I went this route after getting unrelated bachelors
degrees from a large university. I think a lot of people don't become
competent after these bootcamps because they just aren't technical enough to
grasp the concepts at the pace they're introduced in class.

The people in my cohort have been fairly successful. Without checking I think
about 50% of them have jobs as web developers now.

~~~
cortesoft
The question is... did the bootcamp help? Or could you have done all of this
skipping the bootcamp?

I also was a nerd growing up, wrote QBasic code in 2nd grade, got an unrelated
bachelors degree (Philosophy).... but I just used side projects as my resume
to get my first job 15 years ago.

Did you need the bootcamp, or could you have entered the industry without it?

~~~
metalgearsolid
The answer to both questions is yes. A bootcamp helped me because it put me
into a collaborative environment where I had some kind of obligations to show
up and complete projects. Ultimately, you really only need side projects. I'm
actually struggling in my job search right now, despite getting my foot in the
door and doing great work for about 3 years, as having one company on my
resume is not making up for my lack of newer side projects.

------
beering
Take anything Zed Shaw says with a grain of salt, given that he has his own
very strong views on how to teach/learn coding (as shown by his books).

For example, "FBTA"s are real and I have encountered them in real life. There
are definitely bootcamps that game the system by hiring their own grads.

On the flip side, I think ISAs are a really promising way to align incentives
between the school and students. Compare that to people going into massive
debt by going to uni and then failing to find a good job - only the gov't
cares if you're able to repay your debt or not.

~~~
chanchar
On this note, I'm surprised ISAs are not more common for higher education (ie.
college, university). I know a couple of smaller liberal art schools (ie.
Purdue) have been testing this.

~~~
_--___-___
Are you referring to the only Purdue I know of, which is a flagship state
university known for its engineering programs? I guess it's small compared to
Ohio State and liberal arts-focused compared to Georgia Tech.

------
southphillyman
Made the mistake of suggesting a bootcamp to an unemployed relative. She
passed the initial screening/interview stage but really seemed to be
struggling with the prerequisite material. The bootcamp didn't seem to care
and kept trying to pressure her into signing the ISA. She probably wouldn't
have been able to complete a basic beginner MOOC much less an intensive 8+
hour a day bootcamp. I eventually talked her out of moving forward but it was
not encouraging to see how aggressive the bootcamp wanted to admit a clearly
under qualified student.

~~~
gowld
What's was in that particular ISA? What would it cost if she got a non-
bootcamp-boosted job?

~~~
southphillyman
It was Lambda School, so whatever their terms are.

------
ngngngng
Austen seems to be working exceptionally hard to get around the fact that
they're operating illegally in CA. California laws are often garbage
(overbearing, ill conceived, whatever) but damn is it frustrating to see so
many vulnerable students saddle themselves with so much debt in pursuit of
making a stable living.

[https://insights.dice.com/2019/10/02/lambda-school-
violation...](https://insights.dice.com/2019/10/02/lambda-school-violation-
law/)

~~~
gowld
> Austen seems to be working exceptionally hard to get around the fact that
> they're operating illegally

You mean trying to fix the fact?

As far as I've seen (Allred comments on HN), Allred/Lambda certainy test the
boundaries of law and enforcement, but Allred is consistently respectful with
CA's rulings, does what CA agencies demand, and keeps the school/"school"
open. Yes, Lambda moves fast and breaks rules and pays penalty costs, but they
don't deny the legitimacy of the laws and try to weasel out.

------
alexbanks
My personal experience around bootcamps echoes all of these points. I've
interacted with several codeschool grads and several of them took those exact
TA positions to boost employment %s. Of all the bootcamps I've ever seen,
HackReactor is probably the only one I'd ever hire from again. Their grads
(without asserting anything about the ethics of the school) seem to be more
employable than the rest post-schooling.

~~~
redthrow
Someone who went to HackReactor & got a job at Airbnb making 6 figures was
telling people not to go to a Bootcamp because the job situation is getting
worse and all the best parts of the course are available either for free
online or $10 on Udemy (vs $20k for the bootcamp).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSgsX80ymF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSgsX80ymF8)

~~~
gowld
Maybe people who go to bootcamps know that watching videos from home doesn't
work for them?

~~~
redthrow
That exact point is addressed at the 3:00 mark.

~~~
peripitea
Edit: For context, his argument is basically: "If independent learning is not
your forte then that's a much larger problem, because you will need to do
significant independent study regardless of the bootcamp."

It's not a great argument. Yes, being able to learn/research independently is
an important skill that everyone should have, but it's a spectrum. Teaching
yourself programming in six months through self-study alone is VERY FAR along
on that spectrum. I would bet there are far more people who can get a job with
the structure/forced deadlines/etc. of a bootcamp + a heavy amount of self-
study to improve their skills, than there are who can do the entire thing
themselves.

Also, self study is far from the most efficient way to learn most things.
Having someone to help unblock you when you have a bug you can't figure out,
or when there's a concept you're not quite grasping can make a huge difference
in your overall rate of learning.

------
jbtule
Boot camp combined with apprenticeship model is way better.

LaunchCode [https://www.launchcode.org/](https://www.launchcode.org/) is non-
profit, no ISA, no fee to applicant. Offers a free slower paced bootcamp
(after work hours) that teach you the basics (two programming languages, git,
mvc style web programming), but then you interview and place into a paid
apprenticeship, about $15/hour, at an employer who trains you for the Job they
want you to do (3-6 months), after which if the apprenticeship works out they
hire you on with full entry level tech salary for that area.

The catch is it's only in Saint Louis, South Florida, Kansas City, and Tampa
Bay.

Not to say any bootcamp wouldn't work, it's just the key to bootcamps working,
is getting hired by a company that invests in training their Junior Devs,
which is MUCH more important than the bootcamp itself.

~~~
tomlagier
Strong agree on the key to success being a company that will invest in
training juniors. I think a lot of the noise around bootcamps misses this key
fact - it's not really the education which makes people employable, it's the
real-world work experience.

I think that just having a directory of companies that are willing to hire
people with minimal experience at slightly-better-than minimum wage is a much
better approach to the problem then trying to delude people that anyone can
make six figures after a two month boot camp.

Some can, sure, but it's a much less reliable method than working in the
industry for a few years.

------
everdev
I'm glad to see Income Share Agreements (ISAs) as #1. They're a tax on the
poor and just as bad if not worse than predatory student loans.

This "don't pay unless you get a job education model" costs you far more than
those who have the means to pay for a bootcamp outright.

BTW, as someone who hires developers at all talent levels I'd never put any
value in a diploma, from an Ivy League or a boot camp. The only thing I want
to see is the most interesting thing you've built recently. From there we can
talk technical details and cultural fit.

~~~
barry-cotter
> I'm glad to see Income Share Agreements (ISAs) as #1. They're a tax on the
> poor and just as bad if not worse than predatory student loans.

They’re a loan that you don’t need to pay back unless you’re making money. The
idea that they’re as bad as a normal student loan let alone a predatory one is
nuts.

Certainly they should be capped so there’s a maximum amount you’l you can
possibly end up paying, not uncapped like App Academy’s but you’d have to have
a very high proposition of an income share or an extremely long term for them
to be as bad as a standard student loan.

~~~
everdev
Some collect $40-60k over the life of an ISAs while normal tuition is around
$10-15k.

If the ISA is capped at the tuition or sightly higher it's a wonderful
program. Very few are.

Student loans are often predatory but I'm not sure if any topically collect 4x
the total tuition over the life of the loan.

------
gdix
No way, the bootcamps hire some of their students as teaching assistants which
the students put on their resume?! What a scam! What kind of organization
would ever do this. Oh wait, every college. Not a scam, duh.

Want to hear the biggest scam? There are organizations that charge $200K _up
front_ to teach you things regardless of whether you get a job. Most of what
they teach you can be acquired FOR FREE on the internet. Many many people
never get a job in their field and spend decades paying these organizations
back. Many of these organizations have tens of billions of dollars in
endowments. You may have heard of some of them: Harvard, Yale, MIT. Something
seriously must be done about these scam artists.

------
dannykwells
The author appears to run this website:
[https://learncodethehardway.org/](https://learncodethehardway.org/) which
_directly_ profits from people not doing bootcamps but rather, teaching
themself to code (using his books). So maybe not the most unbiased source
(even if some of the content rings true).

Everyone - _everyone_ \- always has an angle.

~~~
grimjack00
On the other hand, I know of a couple bootcamps that recommend his website and
books as prep and supplementary material.

------
axbytg
When it works, it works. Myself and a friend started learning programming at
the same time, both with the goal of switching careers. I worked in tech in
sales, he had a job translating subtitles. He did a bootcamp, I taught myself.
I'm finally on my first job as a SWE at a tiny startup with no funding, making
a little less than I was in sales. He has been promoted 3 times to engineering
manager at a well established international company with $xx,xxx,xxx in
funding, and just bought a house. Maybe don't throw out the baby with the
bathwater.

------
sincerely
I guess I'm confused why he calls ISAs a scam. They're remarkably
straightforward and making 100k - 25% or whatever seems a hell of a lot better
than making 30k

~~~
Bartweiss
His phrasing is pretty strong, but I guess there's a difference between "ISAs
are scams" and "shady bootcamps can use ISAs as scams".

In particular, harsh ISAs are almost completely dominated by student loans,
charging like a loan if you have a bad job and much worse if you have a good
one. Say a bootcamp with $15k tuition offers an ISA at 20% of income above
$10k for 4 years, capped at $85k income. That's unusually bad, but not a
blatant scam.

If the bootcamp gets you a good job at or above cap, you pay $60k over 4
years. Much higher than tuition, but on some level who cares - you're still
way ahead overall.

If the bootcamp doesn't help you at all, and you keep a prior $35k wage job,
you'll wind up paying $20k total at $415/month. A 7%, four year student loan
for the full tuition would only have cost ~$350/month.

So you only really "win" if you're unemployed or down near minimum wage. (Or
drop out, perhaps? I don't know what happens to ISAs in that case.)

I think most ISAs are better than that, especially wrt salary floor. But
paying a double-digits percentage of income even if the program hasn't helped
you get a better job isn't necessarily much 'safer' than taking a loan
directly. It could still be better with poor credit or high prior debt, but
ISAs aren't generally promoted on that basis.

------
vo2maxer
Zed’s follow up to initial thread on bootcamps:

[https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212808427468185600?s=21](https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212808427468185600?s=21)

------
rchaud
My recommendation for people interested in bootcamps is to focus on one that
offers a skillset in a particular area like Wordpress, that doesn't require
education on formal CS concepts. You can still get exposure to databases,
security, UI/UX design etc doing Wordpress, without bankrupting yourself
paying 5-figure bootcamp fees.

Best of all, you can get a real job building marketing websites/some basic
apps, as opposed to pie-in-the-sky dreams of working at Netflix's Data Science
department.

BTW, my bootcamp (I took a JS course), paid me $500 to post about my
experience on Quora. I wrote a 1,000 word article about what I learned and how
I applied in a project. To the bootcamp's credit, at no point was I asked to
embellish my experience or attribute getting a job solely due to the bootcamp.

------
chimpful
I went to Makersquare(now hack reactor) and I can tell you #10 is definitely
true. There is no network of job openings and most people found jobs outside
the school. Half found jobs half didn't. The ones that found jobs out of the
bootcamp were extremely smart.

The TA point is also true. The letting go of lower quality applicants was also
true.

I think the Camp was more fulfilling for me because I had previous programming
experience so I could dive deeper into the material since I had some
fundamentals already in place. If you have no previous experience, you are
f'ed because the material goes by to quickly to deeply learn anything.

------
alanh
I just want to say that, as is usually the case for _any_ label or collection
of people, you have to end up judging bootcamp grads on an individual basis.
At my company, we have interviewed and hired quite a few bootcamp grads, most
of whom were previously bootcamp TAs. And yeah — a lot of them are very
mediocre, you know, the kind of engineer you would never select to be on your
dream team, but at least one is a really amazing hire, a great co-worker,
extremely conscientious and forever learning on and off the job, pushing the
rest of us forward, etc.

~~~
Bartweiss
"Many bootcamp grads are unqualified" is sort of a weird complaint in a field
where it's common (and I think accurate) to complain that many degree-holders
with a decade of experience are unqualified.

It's not obvious to me that this is any special weakness of bootcamps, rather
than just another consequence of the fact that programming doesn't have much
standardized education or trustworthy credentialing.

------
dvtrn
I accidentally posted in another thread* earlier today about my curiosity over
point 7 which included reports of bullying and "FBTA's" forcing people to do
pushups.

Tried Googling and couldn't come up with any results, but have any of these
reports been published or written about? That sort of behavior should
absolutely be put in the spotlight and strongly rebuked.

*[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972278)

~~~
mtnGoat
i was curious where this came from too. is he latching onto one single hearsay
experience or is this widespread. nobody i know that went to a bootcamp was
hazed.

------
blaser-waffle
> #4: These Fake Bootcamp TAs (FBTA) will claim any previous job that is
> within 20 miles of "tech" is a qualification to teach computer science.
> FBTAs have used:

> Geology

> System Administration

> Accounting

> Law

> Civil Engineering

I'm gonna have to disagree with System Administration as not being "tech" or
not qualified. Skillsets of Syadmins and Netadmins may vary greatly, but
someone with a background in bash and some knowledge of the Windows Registryis
going to be light years ahead of someone coming in with a background in
geology or law.

~~~
Bartweiss
That stood out to me also.

There are sysadmins, even very experienced ones, who have never written code
or code-equivalent scripts. But there are lots who _have_ , and "tell me more"
seems like the obvious reaction. For that matter, anyone with a recent Civil
Engineering degree has probably done a fair bit of Matlab programming, and
even some geologists do heavyweight climate modelling. If we agree that a
background in physics is potentially a good qualification, it's worth asking
most of these people what specific work qualifies them.

Maybe the complaint was specifically about those people _teaching_
programming, though? "Sysadmin + bootcamp" could definitely prepare someone
for an entry-level programming job, but it does sound worrying if a bootcamp
loads up on TAs who don't have education or experience in software beyond the
bootcamp itself.

------
duxup
Anecdote time:

I did a camp tied to Trilogy, that ran through a local University (but really
was only administered it, no 'educational' ties).

It was a good camp IMO, it had plenty of flaws, but overall I think it was a
good camp.

The real issue ... they don't filter who gets in enough. Admittedly that is a
HARD job as you don't know who will do well. In my crowd of folks who did well
there was "accountant tired of accounting", "VP or something or other who just
wanted to do a coding camp", "director of something or other who just didn't
want to manage people", "bank teller who wanted a real job", "musician who
wanted to try something more profitable", and a collection of other not great
job / folks who didn't do much in college. These were a mix of young and old,
age didn't matter, and they all did great.

But on the down side I'd say that at least 50% of the class "graduated" and
were IMO, unemployable. I'm not talking about passing an interview, I just
don't think they were ever going to learn.

I often think of them and what happened to them. I expect some amount of that
but the costs involved were high, I hope they didn't take a serious financal
hit.

Personally I'm doing fine, as are the other folks who did well in class, web
dev now and happy to be coding away.

------
motohagiography
Why do we have bootcamps for coding when we could apply the same methodology
to law, minor surgery, accounting, policing, and jobs we actually need more
people in because the prices are so high?

We could teach elementary school kids to set bones, do stitches, manage
projects, and treat flu. If people have a problem with this, they should have
a problem with subsidies for teaching people to code as well.

~~~
saddestcatever
Because "Software Engineering" isn't (currently) held to the same standards of
certification, ethics, and peer review that other Engineering and Medical
fields are. Maybe some day.

~~~
carapace
Yeah, this.

...maybe?

On the one hand the idea that you can become a well-paid programmer starting
from one of these bootcamps is almost insulting to me as someone who dedicated
much of his life to the field.

On the other hand, a lot of people do it. I've worked with them. They don't
all suck.

Have I wasted my life on trivialities?

What does my knowledge and, yes, mastery count for if Joe Bootcamp can solve
Jane Businessman's problems with a few months of training and a bolus of
javascript?

~~~
mrguyorama
I didn't get a Computer Science degree to build web apps. I got it because I
enjoyed learning about the field and technology. I build web apps to pay the
bills

------
cweagans
Zed Shaw writes books targeted at new programmers. From my standpoint, he has
a financial incentive to not appreciate bootcamps, especially those with ISAs
and similar that don't require up front investment from students because they
are cutting into his book sales.

Some of his points are definitely true at some schools, but it's worth taking
most of them with a grain of salt.

~~~
glangdale
Do you think that it's very likely that someone would forgo buying a
relatively cheap book in favor of going to a bootcamp? This seems like two
very different markets, and I would suspect that many people in the space
where they overlap would do _both_ (i.e. buy the book and go to a bootcamp).

~~~
cweagans
Potentially. They're both marketed to the same audience and they're often sold
as no upfront cost, which can be really appealing.

It's completely anecdotal, but I know several people that have chosen
bootcamps over books and they're much happier for it.

~~~
glangdale
"Learn Python 3 the Hard Way" on Amazon: "68 used and new from $11.95". New
it's essentially $18.

I have trouble imagining that anyone who _might_ have wanted to learn from a
book would have baulked at a <$US20 purchase. There are plenty of people who
don't like learning from books, which is fine, and I'm certainly not denying
their existence, but those people wouldn't be in Zed's market anyhow.

------
master_yoda_1
I agree with the points but I can't bias my opinion just because someone went
to bootcamp. You can find good or bad candidate everywhere. Once I interviewed
a candidate form one of the well known state funded school and the person
can't even write a for loop.

Also IMO coursera/udacity/community colleges are more reliable than bootcamp.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I attended a Big Nerd Ranch Advanced iOS bootcamp, in 2012 (It was still ObjC,
back then).

It was an excellent (and expensive) experience. One of my fondest memories of
the last decade. I feel it was worth every penny of it. My company did not pay
for it. I took a week's vacation, and paid for it out of pocket.

I don't pretend that it was anything more than a fairly basic "primer," to get
me "back on the bicycle again," but it did a great job with that.

That said, it was a different animal from the types of bootcamps that the
author is talking about. It was a "prototypical" bootcamp; a week-long,
immersion course, with a fairly narrow agenda.

------
mcguire
" _#6: Gotta keep that 95%-100% job placement rate up, but did you know that
it 's 95% of "graduates" get placed in jobs? Well, if you can't increase
placement, then decrease the number of "graduates". Best one is the school
that calls you a graduate once you get a job. 100% baby!_"

I've seen that one with a for-profit college. It requires a paid "internship"
thingy to graduate. Then gives out really uninspired internship openings.
Sure, you've got a job, though.

------
0kl
I will try to refrain from being anecdotal here, but some of it will leak in,
I’m sure.

Boot camps usually strap in their students for about 3-6 months and make them
learn extremely basic coding in some modern stack with html/css.

Depending on the company, this may be a better/cheaper alternative to starting
talent that was in the grinder for 4 years but may not have any other business
knowledge - or sometimes lack knowledge aside from c++/java. (Not arguing the
merits here, personally I prefer depth of understanding to a mechanical and
superficial understanding, but business needs do differ)

So is it fair to say boot camps are stealing your money? The same way that any
for-profit educational institute might. At the same time, they have a similar
function to other educational institutions in that they are largely a culling
mechanism and not an educational one - but that is a problem across the board.

It’s unfortunate that they market and promise what they do, as it’s just
unrealistic - but that doesn’t mean that they don’t do anything. I don’t have
the data anymore, but from multiple cohorts what I saw was a slightly skewed
bell curve, where the top of the class (~1 out of every 10 or so) tends to do
well and find a decent entry level job in 3-8 months, the bottom of the class
just flatlines and really don’t learn a thing (1-4 of 10), and the remaining
hustle hard to break into the industry for ~2 years or decide it’s not for
them.

I haven’t run the numbers, but I know a lot of my college educated friends are
not working in what they studied, so for those that ended up not in a code
related role, but did not bottom out (I.e. they did learn some basics of how
code works), were they scammed by the universities? (Okay, actually, as a
victim of this myself, I’d say yes here, but again, I’m just pointing out this
may not be isolated to boot camps)

Summary: only go to a boot camp if you have your eyes wide open and know it is
a culling mechanism and that if you’re not in the top of the class or
exceptionally lucky, you will not have an easy time finding employment. Even
the top of the class won’t have an easy time, but it’ll be easier than you.
You will probably leave knowing more about code than before regardless, but
also be aware of how shallow your knowledge will be, regardless of how long or
intense your boot camp is.

------
bitwize
Ooh! Ooh! Here's one! Offering you "free" training and job placement, then
making you sign yourself into two years of indentured servitude, falsifying
your CV and phone screen to get you work, and because of that contract you
signed if you back out you're on the hook for the cost of your "free"
training, which they assess at $20,000.

------
hashkb
Former instructor here: don't spend your money on this. My bootcamp, as far as
I know, didn't abuse anyone; just innocently failed to provide the students
with the value. Three months isn't enough time. One year isn't enough time.

If you had a good experience at a bootcamp, then you probably would have been
fine on your own. Most students at bootcamps are like most students at any
school (lazy/cheating) except in the case of the bootcamp, the school has less
to offer in the first place and essentially no incentive to grade you
rigorously. So even more than usual, you get out what you put in.

Bootcamp grads flooding the industry have put such a burden on hiring,
performance reviews, and firing, that we now live in a world where "senior"
means "second year" and asking someone to perform a tree search on a white
board is literally torturing them. Making good software, dealing with other
humans, providing value and earning money -- it's not easy; and it's
ridiculous to assume that these bootcamps can come anywhere near the (lack of)
preparation you get from real schools.

------
alanh
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1212284566431576069.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1212284566431576069.html)

~~~
alisey
How do people even read on Twitter? All I can see on their desktop website is
a single tweet with a "Show this thread" link that doesn't do anything.

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TurkishPoptart
Does anyone here have experience with Codefellows? Considering taking one of
their courses.

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ravenstine
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I attended a bootcamp(Dev Bootcamp)
and it was a life-changing time for me.

However, I will say this:

\- When there's a gold rush, there are going to be people trying to make money
selling shovels. Some of those shovels are going to be crap. Perhaps most.
That doesn't mean that some people aren't running an honest business(or in
this case, a bootcamp).

\- Bootcamps are what you make of them. If you expect them to be like a school
where knowledge is just dumped on your lap by a professor, you're going to be
in for a world of disappointment. If you're willing to take charge of your
learning and are willing to spend the time sharing knowledge with others, and
dedicate yourself to maximizing your time(studying, projects, failing in a
good way), then a bootcamp will be for you. _I spent as much time as I could
learning, and was often the last person to exit the building in the early AM._

\- In relation to the previous point, you may not necessarily need a bootcamp.
If you have the passion and the will, you can acquire the knowledge and skills
on your own. You could take the tens of thousands of dollars you'd spend on a
bootcamp and quit work for a while to study and do projects at home, go to
hacker spaces, and attend developer meetups, and you'd get something pretty
close to what a bootcamp will give you. However, a bootcamp will bring you
together with a bunch of other people in the same position as you in somewhere
like San Francisco where there's nonstop action going on. By going to Dev
Bootcamp, I was immersed in a world I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to
and had experiences with people I might not have had otherwise. All in all,
most of the value of a bootcamp is _being around people you can learn from and
with_. If you find that on your own, then you might be able to save by not
having to pay that bootcamp tuition.

All that said, I don't completely disagree with Shaw's tweets. A lot of
bootcamps are clearly(IMO) predatory. Ultimately, a bootcamp can't make any
guarantees as to whether or not you get a job. That task is ultimately up to
you and, as much as it's not fair, your success will mostly stem from your
ability to sell yourself. You can be a completely shit programmer but charm
your way into a career. Income share deals, I think, are a bad idea, even if
they work out for a few. At that point, you might as well save money by
skipping bootcamp and do the learn-on-your-own approach I described earlier.
There are many bootcamps that act like they have standards but will actually
take just about anyone, even if they aren't really the type that can handle
the self-responsibility of going to a bootcamp.

Shaw might be painting with a broad brush, he's not totally wrong.

------
draw_down
Typical replies... "this doesn't represent ALL bootcamps!" Oh, I didn't know
that excuses it. Less than 100% of them operate immorally so let's just not
talk about it.

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troughway
@zedshaw - any idea of if/when you'll write that rant on why pickaxe book
ruined ruby?

------
kresten
Good to see Zed Shaw back.

Wonder what’s he’s doing these days....

~~~
sky_rw
_follow link, reads twitter bio_ He's teaching people how to code, the hard
way.

------
Dirlewanger
Zed certainly knows how to ruffle feathers. He's a rare voice in the tech
world that will cut through the bullshit.

~~~
carapace
Ha! I met him once IRL. It took him two sentences to insinuate that I might be
an asshole.

Me: Something about FOO.

Jed: "Most people I've met who are into FOO are assholes."

Me: ...

Nevertheless, I find him entertaining, and he definitely will cut through the
bullshit.

