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We don't see the same trends in Europe, where university degrees are mostly cheap or free.
I think it's a big leap from "two large bootcamps have closed" to "the bootcamp industry is shutting down". Like anything else, there was a big race to capture the market once Dev Bootcamp proved it could work, and now the market is correcting itself. No reason to think bootcamps are going to stop existing altogether.
Exactly. There's good bootcamps and bad bootcamps, of course some will shut down. What other industry would cause this headline? A grocery store down the street from me closed, I guess supermarkets are all dying!
It's funny, until recently I thought boot camps were for people who already were working in a field who wanted to sharpen a particular skill in that field. At least, the few my work paid for some years back were essentially that. From the sounds of it though a lot of places are abusing these to create micro IIT Techs that hand out near worthless certificates.
Right, same with MOOCs. I am a pretty experienced engineer already, I recently took a course on EdX[1]. I wanted to round out my R (mainly a Python guy but there is some cool stuff in the R ecosystem), revise some of the maths from undergrad 20+ years ago, try out a MOOC, and take a peek into an area of computing I'd had no exposure to. I enjoyed it and I got a lot out of it and would recommend it to others. But could I have been a non-programmer, completed that course, and been adequately prepared to begin a career in industry? Absolutely not.
And to be fair that is not how that course is pitched, but there are some that are, that have even less content in them. $200 is a bargain for a working engineer who wants a new skill, or is even just curious. $20000 is a massive scam for a beginner who thinks they can kickstart a career that way.
Why do people think a 12 week course will make a non-technical person ready for a junior developer role? Most developers I know have years of deep experience with computers before becoming professional programmers. (Things like fixing driver issues, installing linux, patching games etc). I have several friends who went to bootcamps had no deep technical interest beforehand. They just heard that computer programming w…
I think this is the biggest possible problem with them. I've known a few people who've gone through it and done well. The different between them and others is that they want to be programmers. The 12 week course didn't teach them everything, but it taught them enough to go and figure out what questions to ask and search for. Those people who are in it for the money are going to burn out, because it takes a lot more dedication than a 12 week course.
When I interview interns for the upcoming summer, I always ask the same question, "Why do you want to do this?" They always get this puzzled look on their face, and then I explain to them that dollar per hour, this is one of the lowest paid fields if they want to be successful. You'll end up working nights and weekends, not because of the company you work for (although maybe), but because a lot of developers want to know more. They go home and think about what they did and how to make it better. People who are strictly in it for the money won't do this, and so many of them won't succeed.
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I think there is more information that is let on here. I've talked with some folks at prominent bootcamps who are likely to be shutting their doors or hard pivoting soon if their revenue situation doesn't drastically improve.
Any idea what's causing the revenue problem? I assume it's getting harder to attract students willing to pay for a bootcamp? Is that because fewer people are looking to learn to code than a few years ago? Or because they're learning in different ways other than bootcamps? Or is everyone only wanting to go to the most prestigious bootcamps? Or something else?
"While coding boot camps had many course listings on JavaScript, Ruby, and web development, they had none that covered product management, wireframing, cloud computing, DevOps, or Agile methodologies" I have a 4 year computer science degree and I didn't learn any of the listed topics either, so I'm not sure if the article is implying that other institutions do prepare new grads for these topics. The main advantage I…
What year did you graduate, out of curiosity?
I believe boot camps got a bit of traction because of the price point compared to a college degree. Once people realized they didn't learn enough and didn't get that sweet three figure silicon valley job, the hype started to fade. We don't see the same trends in Europe, where university degrees are mostly cheap or free.
I didn't want to waste 2-3 years getting an additional degree, and a bootcamp filled in nicely (simply a personal anecdote but it worked fine for me)
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I could see six months work - it'd just have to be intensive and under very good teachers (hard to find!).
One of the great things about online coursework is that it requires less staff and everyone can work at a different pace. From what I've read/heard 42 Code School has very little staff and mostly relies on computer courses and peer learning. https://www.42.us.org/
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Ditto on the CS Degree. Closest thing I learned to the above skills that was part of the curriculum was Waterfall, UML, and making ERDs. Had to teach myself git.
You joking right? I got my cs degree 15 years ago and back then i learned Waterfall, UML, and making ERDs...
Why do people think a 12 week course will make a non-technical person ready for a junior developer role? Most developers I know have years of deep experience with computers before becoming professional programmers. (Things like fixing driver issues, installing linux, patching games etc). I have several friends who went to bootcamps had no deep technical interest beforehand. They just heard that computer programming w…