>>They just heard that computer programming was good money, and they enrolled.

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.

Many students don't understand why they go into their chosen fields at first. They say it is "passion for---" when really, it just seems like a stable, responsible profession that their parents approve of. Along the way, hopefully, with the help of fantastic teachers, a true love of the subject emerges, deeper interests within it are explored and uncovered, and a great doctor or lawyer is made. (My own PCP and another surgeon of mine and my dentist are some of these amazing people) There are other versions of this. Artists and musicians who realize they won't make it go into medicine to make money, at their last available second before their ship goes down. The thing is, they learned something from their previous profession... they learned how to really get into a lifelong pursuit with rigor and intensity and invention and purpose. One never loses the need for that once it is activated. These bootcamps are flooded with folks like this- those who crave actual content to sink their mental teeth into, with Actual Masters in the field to help guide them in a more financially (but no less interesting and intellectually worthy) rewarding/viable direction than the direction they had been going in as a performance artist or Morris dancer (the profession they chose as pre-teens). I kid, but seriously. And what do they find at these bootcamps? Decidedly Not That. —No real masters in the field, no deeply engaging content on par with Morris dancing (or Russian Literature, or Political Science, or The Classics, History, or Art), and no hope for anything but the same disrespect upon leaving these "camps" from future employers than they got as Classics MAs or PHDs. They get spat upon like they presented themselves as puppeteers or mimes. This is why the money just isn't coming into these bootcamps anymore. Smart folks hide the bootcamp from their resume, which means they need to hide the associating GitHub repositories (lots of work here, folks). These graduates talk to one another. A lot. They talk about how they are treated at interviews, or even before interviews. They just don't have the money and time to fart around in their new garrett deleting work they have done that might associate them with a bootcamp, making huge portfolios of visually pleasing apps and deeply meaningful contributions to opensource software projects(not that they would not love to do just that, mind you). They need jobs. And they see other barely competent folks working jobs in tech companies who had nothing resembling their education and even coding ability getting paychecks because they got there sooner. That is why they aren't buying the snake oil anymore. It just isn't the "on ramp" these camps make it out to be anymore, even though it seems to have been for a short time.

After this thread ages for a day or so, head over to the Twitter feeds of bootcamp CEOs and directors to hear how they describe this thread as being "all anecdotal evidence of a few who "Don't Really Know What IS Going On"" instead of taking this information in... in a meaningful way and making actual change for the students they already have and the ones they hope to get in the future. That costs too much money and time. Money and time they would prefer the students spend. So these students are squeezed on both sides- by the camps who false promise and the employers who want them to arrive job-ready out of the gate. Jumping up and down and saying it ain't so isn't going to make this un-so.

I think we need to stop degrading people for wanting a job and calling that "just in it for the money". Everyone does a job "for the money". Why should a worker not want compensation for hard work? Come on! We call those people "artists" don't we? And we know how much they get paid. This isn't heading in a good direction. Let's show some vision.

I tend to hold the opposing view, but appreciate that you made this point. It's definitely my experience that people who worked mastering at the performing arts, classics/literature, or even professional gaming have something that helps them persevere and navigate through a new field.

However the idea that "a true love of the subject emerges", "the help of fantastic teachers".. I don't think I've ever met anyone who had that path to excellence AFTER entering a field, find it difficult to imagine, and I've always disliked the uncritical use of "passion for x stable, responsible profession that their parents approve of". But I might be weird and blinded and I'm going to try to notice if such people exist. It probably doesn't help that most of these professions are made of people that have never done anything else.

One "enters the field" of the arts, classics, history, law, medicine, and computer science often as children. The difference in paths taken is this: when one enters the arts or literature or history, there is a good chance one will have to leave it at some point. Many lawyers are former "writers" who while in law school get inspired by a great constitutional law professor or who while in the early days of their profession get inspired by a colleague who becomes a mentor and helps them form a new identity as writer who is also really really into law...and as I said, many doctors I know were former artists and musicians who bring that same drive toward innovation they learned in the arts to medicine. Most of those people encounter a great mentor while in their residency who helps them find a new inspiration. But a great teacher can be the content itself, or an innovator one learns about. Then, they are on that path to excellence, and even more so than someone who just did medicine the whole time. They have a depth and breadth that other doctors lack, which is why med schools have started to include literature courses these days. (i'll look for a good link on this) My point is, no one is studying actual Dijkstra in a bootcamp and he doesn't work in one either. There may be possible future Dijkstras or the like attending the bootcamp, but they often feel like they jumped into the intellectual equivalent of a quick Happy Meal when they really wanted a quick plate of gorgeous figs. Still quick, but somehow more inspiring...more nutritious.

Computer scientists often begin as children (like the others) but never have to leave their field because after all the gaming and taking stuff apart and building, they go on to be computer scientists who have excellent money making prospects when compared to literature majors.

Fair enough. I myself tried to transition to software, but went through Hacker School, now known as the Recurse Center. They're rather closer to a good meal, and are tuition-free.

I do know that medical schools have been trying to attract individuals with other backgrounds -- was recruited myself, and admissions committee members told me one reason is that doctors have the impression they may have screwed themselves by being monoculturally ignorant of economic forces, technology, etc. So they're encouraging people who aren't from the traditional biological sciences backgrounds.

I'd expect the med school literature courses to have about as much effect as med school statistics courses, though -- little to none. Plus, there's been interest in shortening med school.

>I'd expect the med school literature courses to have about as much effect as med school statistics courses, though -- little to none. Plus, there's been interest in shortening med school.

I agree with you there about the lit courses. And shortening med school is a great idea, as is allowing residents to sleep full nights on a regular basis.

The Recurse Center: It seems like a great place! I would not include it in any bootcamp discussion because it is more of a retreat than anything else-- an artist colony for programmers or something more akin to Yaddo or McDowell for coders without the snobbery. I think they might be the only ones who have gotten it right. And I agree that they are closer to a good meal. I think a transitioning person would have a good chance of finding inspiration there among its participants due to the flexibility and internal/self motivation that is emphasized and selected for.

And...no one would ever need to hide the Recurse Center (or any related GitHub repositories) from their résumé—they would highlight it.

> Why do people think a 12 week course will make a non-technical person ready for a junior developer role?

I'm not sure many people do think that. But it was an experiment. If you assume that the tooling around "programming" or "product building" or whatever you want to call it will eventually be good enough that you can slot a generic human into a well-defined role then these bootcamps might make sense.

We may get to a point where building software is more like building a car, and we just need humans to work on the factory assembly line. But we're not there yet. So the experiment failed.

> We may get to a point where building software is more like building a car, and we just need humans to work on the factory assembly line. But we're not there yet. So the experiment failed.

I've seen this sentiment being thrown around a lot lately. I don't think it will ever be the case. There will always need to be someone who can build the tools or the tools that build the tools or the tools that build the tools that build the tools.

Let's use your auto assembly line idea to illustrate this. A good portion of auto manufacturing these days is completely automated, the body is assembled by robots for instance. Well, a factory had to build those robots, right? That factory probably bought some robot control software from another company who specializes in that. The company that built the robot probably didn't manufacture all of the components for the robot. For instance, their welding robot may have a wire feed spool that was manufactured by a company that builds welders. However, the company that manufactured the spool probably didn't forge the metal themselves, they bought it from a forging company. That company in turn bought ore from a mining company. The mining company mined that ore using an automated tunnel boring machine. The automated tunnel boring machine was built by another company that manufactures automated mining machinery, and the trail starts anew.

Somewhere down the line in every industry is an engineer who designs and possibly even builds components that are necessary for that industry to operate.

Now, applied to software engineering:

Even if we did have software that could automatically build a web application tailored specifically and exactly to what any given company wanted down to website design and SEO, that software would have still need to have been built in the first place. If that software was built by another piece of software and so on up the line, at some point there is a person who built the progenitor. Regardless of who built the original, wouldn't these pieces of software still have bugs? What if these pieces of software involved more software that could fix their own bugs? Well , who fixes the bugs in the bug fixing software?

Beyond this, what if there is a new feature that needs to be built out? Will the software be able to build out that new feature and integrate it with the existing application? If so, how will it handle conflicts?

As it currently stands, it takes a team of multiple professionals to simply maintain any non-trivial codebase. I don't personally believe that it is possible to design an AI that is powerful enough to do this kind of work without this AI having human levels of intelligence and creativity. In order for this AI to be able to reach this kind of proficiency it would have to be self aware. And then we are forced to ask the question: is self aware AI still AI, or is it alive? We are not ready to answer these questions. Until we are, there will always be a need for flesh and bone engineers of all sorts.

That ended up way longer than I intended.

> To me, the ideal bootcamp student would be the person who dabbles with programming or programming-tangential technologies on the side, but just needs that little extra boost.

my theory is that bootcamps exist for these people and take advantage of everyone else in order to stay afloat. now the "everyone else" is realizing what happened and the market is collapsing.

> Why do people think a 12 week course will make a non-technical person ready for a junior developer role?

The cynical answer is because they saw an ad telling them that the bootcamp would get them A SIX FIGURE JOB!!! and they want to believe it. It's an incredibly attractive pitch.

Because being a junior dev isn't very hard. And certainly doesn't require 4 years of education on computer science minutiae

But being a junior dev with the potential to become a senior dev does.