I graduated from Dev Bootcamp in SF this summer. I think the author of this article shares the sentiment of a lot of working or university-educated programmers who see it from the outside. But, the article is quite misinformed and, to be clear, lacks any factual claims to how well or poorly bootcamp graduates are performing in the real world.
Yes, there are wide claims from these bootcamps about $80k+ jobs waiting for people _if only they take this course_! Naturally, that's great for business, and turns out to be quite true judging from talking to alumni and people graduating from my own cohort. The problem with that, which Shereef (the founder of Dev Bootcamp) tries to get across to the students, is that there is a risk for students to become spectators, to feel like they can just get through the 9 weeks and be entitled to a well-paying job.
A lot of the process is getting you to combat that attitude and turn you into a world-class learner. That's also helped by a selective interview process, and they seem to be doing a good job at getting the most enthusiastic students aboard. What the teachers strive for at DBC is to create an ideal learning environment. It's hands-on and project-based rather than lecture-based, and, to reiterate the point, what one learns there more than anything is how to learn. We also have a whole lot of fun.
It's not for everyone, of course, but for people in certain situations it can be great. My goal was not necessarily to become a web developer, but to break into the software engineering field without a relevant degree or portfolio is a tall order, and I was able to make several projects at DBC that filled up the latter. Not masterpieces by any means, but not "shitty websites" as the author of the article purports. My team's final project used a lot more technologies than just Rails and Javascript (we used Solr, Redis, and several APIs for various tasks).
Two months now after I've graduated, I'm not only working, but using Java, Python, AWS, Linux, and more technologies day-to-day. We didn't use any of those at DBC but I've been able to pick them up quite quickly in part because of learning strategies we developed there. I am probably an outlier in that regard though, as it seems most people getting hired out of DBC are getting jobs doing Rails or front-end work. But not everyone will land a programming job, and some don't wish to.
The best piece of advice I can give to someone looking in to a bootcamp is this: Don't do it if you just want a job and are excited by the salary prospects and opportunites. Do it because you can't help yourself from being a programmer, solving problems relentlessly is something you love, and you want a way to collaboratively kickstart your learning in a great environment.