FCC is how I got into the game. Someone pointed me in that direction from reddit. That was in late 2015. I went to a bootcamp in the midwest, one of only two or three. While I certianly didn't experience any of the hazing or punishment, per se, the long days and vague projects that don't necessarily teach how to solve problems hit home - I learned how to google well pretty early on and I'm glad I'd been teaching myself prior to the bootcamp because holy hell, it was hard and utterly relentless.I have a great job now, but that's after two years of dipping in and out of positions at other companies because I had no idea what to expect out of a workplace in regards to what I wanted and needed (environment, dev setup, peers, mentors/teachers, remote work, etc). the last three years of my career (graduated April 2017) have been a wild ride and not an easy path, but it's certianly taught me that I am resilient and can find a way to survive.

I thank freeCodeCamp for my career too. I spent around 3 months in 2017 studying full-time solely through freeCodeCamp. Then another 5 months building my own products based on tutorials and official documentation. Then got a good job as a frontend developer.

I'm a few years older than you it sounds like but likewise, I found FCC through reddit and finished my front end cert (back when it was still AngularJS based). It definitely wasn't easy getting my first job, and I was lucky to have helpful bosses/mentors to help me bridge the gap from "self taught" to senior dev, but it showed me that it's definitely possible to make it in this industry with a bootcamp or other non-traditional background. I agree with the tweets that you should take graduating/hiring numbers with a grain of salt and be weary of income sharing, but I think the people in this thread totally dismissing bootcamps as a valid path to development are off base.

I think there are two very different types of people. The first group is the group that can do what you say and if that works for you go for it. The second group is the group I fall into. I spent 3 months trying to do this and had a very hard time focusing my growth. Then I signed up at General Assembly and it worked out great for me. You definitely get out of it what you put in, and you need to have an aptitude for coding no matter what, but for some people like me the structure of the class is something sorely needed.

If the self-study path takes a few months longer, it probably isn’t worth it from the perspective of opportunity cost.

Spending $10-20k to get that tech job a few months sooner is a good deal.

Except if you spend 10-20k and you STILL don't get that job. There's still no guarantees. Even w/ a 4 year degree. At least self-taught you're not wasting money and you're basically learning the same thing.

Good advice but 100% not sexy.

As a freelancer it's basically my game plan... Keep adding to portfolio. Keep writing articles. Keep building stuff. Keep moving forward. I'm not always as organized as I'd like to be, but as long as your 'body of work' grows you'll become more valuable. It's not sexy, but it DOES work.

It is very not sexy at all, and all the bootcamps don't want you to know that either as they swindle you out of $10k. The cold hard truth is that not everyone has the aptitude to learn software, and there's nothing wrong with that.