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Are "bootcamps" ever a good way of getting a job or just a scam? I've always leaned towards scam but there's a trade school near me with a really good reputation that offers a bunch of them. E: to clarify, im talking about tech/software related bootcamps. Dunno if other types exist. pencilhands fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jul 25, 2023 |
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Jul 25, 2023 07:11
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YMMV, but two different friends of mine have gone to the same local coding bootcamp in Pittsburgh and both of them got jobs almost immediately after they completed the program. I believe both of them had college degrees (unrelated to tech) prior to attending the bootcamp- I don't know if not having one would making finding a job harder. This would have been 3-4 years ago- I don't know how much the tech sector being layoff-happy these days might affect this, but I certainly wouldn't call it a "scam" (at least the one we have here anyway).
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Jul 25, 2023 15:40
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pencilhands posted:Are "bootcamps" ever a good way of getting a job or just a scam? I've always leaned towards scam but there's a trade school near me with a really good reputation that offers a bunch of them. bad time to do it now, the time to get into it was 3-4 yrs ago. tech sector is in recession and way way way too many people flooded into entry level positions for tech nowadays you are competing with a lot of 4 year CS degree grads for limited number of entry level jobs
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Jul 25, 2023 16:44
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I actually was able to use a bootcamp in the Seattle area to transition from an electrical engineering career into a software engineering career back in 2019, but I got incredibly lucky with some timing, connections, and just plain good luck in there. I think part of the reason it feels scammy is there were a lot of people in the program that figured they could sit through it and they'd just be handed a job at the end of the course work - you definitely needed to be self-guided to be successful in most cases. I'd say only about a quarter of the classmates that attended with me actually made it into actual computer science/tech careers directly from it, but a lot (maybe another 40-50%?) ended up learning a lot of poo poo that was still useful. It was a massive waste of money for everyone else though, and it always felt kind of lovely that the boot camp deliberately strung them along to get more tuition out of them. You've definitely missed the window of opportunity for it to be valuable for getting into software, though - that probably closed mid last year, two or three quarters before these big layoffs started in earnest.
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Jul 26, 2023 23:38
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dervival posted:I actually was able to use a bootcamp in the Seattle area to transition from an electrical engineering career into a software engineering career back in 2019, but I got incredibly lucky with some timing, connections, and just plain good luck in there. I think part of the reason it feels scammy is there were a lot of people in the program that figured they could sit through it and they'd just be handed a job at the end of the course work - you definitely needed to be self-guided to be successful in most cases. I'd say only about a quarter of the classmates that attended with me actually made it into actual computer science/tech careers directly from it, but a lot (maybe another 40-50%?) ended up learning a lot of poo poo that was still useful. It was a massive waste of money for everyone else though, and it always felt kind of lovely that the boot camp deliberately strung them along to get more tuition out of them. having a technical degree is very helpful if you are going to bootcamp one thing bootcamps don't mention is a large % of participants already have some sort of technical or even CS degrees and are just there to learn a new tech stack/refresher. Or people who are already in the tech industry as a non-Dev (i.e PM). It very much skews those stats they put out like "95% of our students end up with job paying $XXX after graduation"
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Jul 27, 2023 19:39
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Typo posted:It very much skews those stats they put out like "95% of our students end up with job paying $XXX after graduation" This lines up with my experience. My (former) company sent me to a "boot camp" for a system I'd already been using for years; in reality it was more of a "certification" without the paper certificate.
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Jul 27, 2023 21:36
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Typo posted:having a technical degree is very helpful if you are going to bootcamp yeah, I think the only person in my cohort who didn't have a technical degree or was a PM that ended up getting a tech job was literally someone who was too impoverished to even entertain the thought of a technical degree when growing up, and he was a getting a ton of financial assistance through some veteran's stuff to even attend.
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Jul 27, 2023 23:45
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I turned being a student at a bootcamp into being part of the instructional team at the same bootcamp. I got in right before layoffs hit the sector and thus layoffs hit the bootcamp, and have somehow rode it out so far, so do say it worked out for me. I'd say it depends a bit in the field, the bootcamp, and the student, and there are still some people who can get good careers going this way. But I wouldn't recommend it in general. The group I graduated with is mostly employed using those skills, and a few even landed real dream jobs. A few are also unemployed still.
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Jul 30, 2023 23:22
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Coding is something you can do as long as you have a computer built in the last 20 years. It's not for everyone. I think it would be a good idea to find an online tutorial for teaching yourself how to code and working through it a bit first to see if you like it. I've met quite a few CS and bootcamp grads over the years. The bootcamp grads with enough training are just as capable as the CS grads when it comes to entry level software development jobs. Going to echo the same sentiment that hiring has slowed down quite a bit in tech but it hasn't completely stopped either. Remote hiring has slowed down significantly. I've seen mostly hybrid jobs. What's the local tech sector look like for you? If there's a decent amount of companies, you might still be able to be successful after attending a bootcamp.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:04
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| # ? May 5, 2024 21:13 |
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mariooncrack posted:Coding is something you can do as long as you have a computer built in the last 20 years. It's not for everyone. I think it would be a good idea to find an online tutorial for teaching yourself how to code and working through it a bit first to see if you like it. I've met quite a few CS and bootcamp grads over the years. The bootcamp grads with enough training are just as capable as the CS grads when it comes to entry level software development jobs. I live in Massachusetts, I can’t imagine it gets much better.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:17
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