I'm sorry if this has been asked here before, but I'm curious to know what your guys' thoughts are on these 9-12 week coding bootcamps that seem to be popping up. I'm not considering one of these, I'm actually a first year CPE student. I just thought it was interesting that people go to these bootcamps and seemingly end up with a software engineering job after attending.
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Thoughts on coding bootcamps and such
- Thread starter Aaron11
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I don't think most of them are worth their extreme price. If you want to spend 9-12 weeks learning software development for 40 hours a week, get an internship or a coop and get paid while you do it. In most cases, you can make enough money to offset some of the price of attending a university.
One of my employers actually does a 'bootcamp' style employee training program. The difference that makes this worth it is A.) They pay you well while you're doing the learning, and B.) The 'bootcamp' is really the first few weeks of your 'job', so once you're done you go on to working for us full time.
Some of the programs around offer 'job placement guarantees', where they will refund your money if you aren't able to be placed in a job with a certain minimum salary. I suppose these are sorta worth it in this case, if all you care about is getting a job and having a certain nominal salary. This of course makes no guarantee about whether or not you'll like the job or whether or not the company will work you into the ground. Other programs have rather bold 'average starting salary' claims, but I think these are somewhat inflated. Hack Reactor, for example, boasts an average starting salary of graduates of $110k per year, but Hack Reactor is based in San Francisco where the cost of living is considerably higher than the rest of the US. Making $110,000 per year in San Francisco, in terms of real wages, is like making $65,000 per year in most other areas of the US, which is in-line with what an average computer science or computer engineering graduate starts at.
I personally have concerns about how great these bootcamp programs actually are. There's no question that they can churn out people who can write basic web applications and do basic web development, but I'm not convinced they actually provide you with that solid of an education. At some of their prices, these bootcamps are equivalent in cost to a couple years of college/university, and I'd honestly say that going to a large university was a pretty enjoyable experience. If I had a choice between the two, I probably wouldn't pick bootcamp.
Slightly unrelated to your question: Good luck with university. Higher education is a great opportunity if properly leveraged. It has a lot to offer outside of just 'learning job skills' (and offers many lessons outside of the classroom as well), so make sure to take advantage of all of it.
One of my employers actually does a 'bootcamp' style employee training program. The difference that makes this worth it is A.) They pay you well while you're doing the learning, and B.) The 'bootcamp' is really the first few weeks of your 'job', so once you're done you go on to working for us full time.
Some of the programs around offer 'job placement guarantees', where they will refund your money if you aren't able to be placed in a job with a certain minimum salary. I suppose these are sorta worth it in this case, if all you care about is getting a job and having a certain nominal salary. This of course makes no guarantee about whether or not you'll like the job or whether or not the company will work you into the ground. Other programs have rather bold 'average starting salary' claims, but I think these are somewhat inflated. Hack Reactor, for example, boasts an average starting salary of graduates of $110k per year, but Hack Reactor is based in San Francisco where the cost of living is considerably higher than the rest of the US. Making $110,000 per year in San Francisco, in terms of real wages, is like making $65,000 per year in most other areas of the US, which is in-line with what an average computer science or computer engineering graduate starts at.
I personally have concerns about how great these bootcamp programs actually are. There's no question that they can churn out people who can write basic web applications and do basic web development, but I'm not convinced they actually provide you with that solid of an education. At some of their prices, these bootcamps are equivalent in cost to a couple years of college/university, and I'd honestly say that going to a large university was a pretty enjoyable experience. If I had a choice between the two, I probably wouldn't pick bootcamp.
Slightly unrelated to your question: Good luck with university. Higher education is a great opportunity if properly leveraged. It has a lot to offer outside of just 'learning job skills' (and offers many lessons outside of the classroom as well), so make sure to take advantage of all of it.
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What languages/skills are they teaching? Are they making guarantees about employment/job placement? How are candidates vetted? Is housing/meals included? Do you have any examples to share?
How would you feel about a surgeon who went to a 9-12 week 'surgery bootcamp'?
If you want to learn some programming, buy a book, experiment, watch free video lectures, or maybe even a site with a small membership fee.
Don't get ripped off by an expensive bootcamp promising to teach you how to do something in weeks that takes years to master. They can really only teach you what you could learn for yourself for free.
Peter.Cort
n00b
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2008
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- 14
I'm sure a handful of the bootcamp's are people just looking to score a buck off people who think that they can learn coding quickly, but if you have experience, even a little, and go into a bootcamp it gives you such a huge advantage over just sitting around with a book and the internet trying to learn. It gives you direction, something to work at, and people to talk to. If all you do is learn from the internet then you can only learn what you can google. I've seen some really bad sites that teach you how to code and give code examples that are out of date, not current best practices, or that have gaping security holes. At least when you're at a bootcamp someone will be able to look at what you're doing and tell you if there isn't something right, and that person may be the group hosting the event, or a peer in the event. On the internet you don't have that until you post for help on a reputable site and someone goes 'well it doesn't work because xyz'.
I've never attended one of these bootcamps, but 9-12 weeks seems like an extraordinarily long time to spend doing anything without getting paid for it, especially in computer science when there are so many paid internships that do similar things. There are a lot of hackathons and other little weekend events that you can participate in that will give you a similar crash course knowledge and be cheaper. Just do some research into the people running it and look at reviews of the program, I'm sure there are forum posts all over the place about a lot of these places.
I researched bootcamps for a while, but I ended up teaching myself most of the way. I also have a private tutor who I meet with once per week that helps me with my coding problems. That's invaluable to work 1 on 1 with an expert. Not many people offer private tutoring in coding let alone the specific thing you want to learn.