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What is the dark side of coding bootcamps?
I didn’t attend a coding bootcamp, but I do hire coding bootcamp graduates (and non-coding bootcamp graduates.) Here’s my perspective on the dark side of that industry.
One thing you might consider is the possibility of failing out.
Bootcamps are both expensive and very intense and the reality is that those who are pretty much guaranteed to pass are the same people who can successfully teach themselves to code using cheap and free online resources.
In a lot of bootcamps, if you’re struggling in the middle and the teachers lose confidence in you they will kick you out. Usually this comes with a partial refund and an invitation to repeat the course… if you can pay for that first part of the course again. This can raise the cost of a code camp to over $25,000 or even $30,000 depending on the camp. I would really think hard about if the value of the camp justifies that kind of expenditure.
But if you don’t repeat the course, you’re just out $5,000 or $10,000. In return for that money you get… nothing. Only a basic skill set that you could have learned online for free.
Remember, 100% of what you can learn at a coding camp is available via online resources. Some are free, some are very cheap. It is possible to recreate the curriculum of a good code camp on Udemy for under $50.
Code camps basically provide three points of value:
They provide instructors that you can ask for help when you get stuck
They provide accountability and they push you at a fast pace (which has its downsides. Most code camp grads have only a shallow understanding of development because they learn it very quickly.)
They provide help with getting your first job. This is probably the biggest reason to go to a camp. If they have a good network of hiring partners, that’s a big deal.
But if you fail out, you lose all those benefits and you most likely gain a not-insignificant amount of debt.
Another aspect of the dark side of coding camps is that many (perhaps most) employers don’t really care about them.
In my current role, I hire new developers regularly. From my point of view, whether you taught yourself or went to a code camp makes exactly zero difference. All I want from a junior developer is to see a good portfolio of projects, a solid understanding of one or two programming languages, and a working knowledge of SQL and the tools you’ll need to get the job done (Git, an IDE, etc.)
There is one other thing I want to see: passion. I want a junior developer to have a deep interest in code and in building projects. A self-taught developer has a big leg up in this regard. A code camp graduate might have passion… but also might just be trying to jump to a higher income bracket. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want to invest the kind of resources it takes to train a junior developer if that’s all they’ve got.
My honest recommendation is that you first try to teach yourself to code before signing up at a coding bootcamp. If you’re going into, say, web development, do the free HTML, CSS, and JavaScript courses at Codecademy. Then build a few projects, like an HTML calculator and a web application that can pull from the YouTube API to show you the top comedy videos of the week. These aren’t easy projects for beginners, but until you’ve done them (or the equivalent) you really don’t understand the basics.
Then try a Udemy course like Colt Steele’s Web Development Bootcamp. You can grab that for $12 if you Google “Udemy Coupon.” Then try his courses on MySQL and React. Colt is a good teacher, and you’ll probably get a lot out of his courses.
Then try building a few full stack web applications. Try something like a basic CMS or a social media app or a chat application or an eCommerce site.
THEN see if a code camp still has value. If it seems like it does, you’ll be prepared for success.
Good luck.