Anecdotally, I agree with this. All of the successful dev bootcamp alumni that I know had been writing code for one reason another for at least a year before they joined one of the bootcamps. They probably didn't need a dev bootcamp to get them off the ground, but it probably helped with giving them structure and routine to fully follow through with retraining and transitioning careers.

Generally there seem to be three schools of hiring: (1) people who have been classically trained, (2) people who seem generally smart and willing to grind, (3) people who have done the work before.

#1 you mostly only get from a 4-year degree program, and colleges generally filter for #2. The other way I see people in category #2 hired is when they transition into a dev job through ad hoc circumstances (e.g. data analyst who needed to do more and more coding on the job). #3 is just having been a programmer before.

If you go to a dev bootcamp, you won't have #1 or #3. You're depending purely on #2, and that's the one category where it's mostly about you, not the dev bootcamp. The dev bootcamp is just there to give you structure and to signal something to employers.

> after getting unrelated bachelors degrees from a large university

This seems to be the common denominator in boot camp graduate success stories: they've completed a college degree already, so they have at least some foundation, they just need somebody to walk them through the details of software development. I'm curious what your degree was in - did you have a math(ish) background already?

The question is... did the bootcamp help? Or could you have done all of this skipping the bootcamp?

I also was a nerd growing up, wrote QBasic code in 2nd grade, got an unrelated bachelors degree (Philosophy).... but I just used side projects as my resume to get my first job 15 years ago.

Did you need the bootcamp, or could you have entered the industry without it?

The answer to both questions is yes. A bootcamp helped me because it put me into a collaborative environment where I had some kind of obligations to show up and complete projects. Ultimately, you really only need side projects. I'm actually struggling in my job search right now, despite getting my foot in the door and doing great work for about 3 years, as having one company on my resume is not making up for my lack of newer side projects.

I go to a gym to do excercises using mainly bodyweight and perhaps three different accessories. I know how to do the excercises and I have everything I need to donit at home and save $150/month and yet I don’t.

I think it helped me because a structured curriculum with expectations really helps me to actually get the work done. The other big plus was having access to the teacher and the TAs as a resource who I could actually walk over and talk to. I definitely could have achieved the same level of understanding without attending the bootcamp but it would have taken much longer cause sometimes I'm a lazy asshole.

I found the in class experience, working with people, being able to ask an instructor who has lots of experience questions immediately HIGHLY valuable.

Half getting it, and a thing working, from some internet tutorial / classes just doesn't compare for me.

Those "Hey does that mean that X, Y, and Z would me an A, B, C? Does it work that way?" moments are key for me to grok something.

You can definitely do the stuff yourself. The difficulty in it is setting your own goals, sticking to them, and trying to do it all yourself. It's dreadfully hard most days especially since there is literally no reward for it whatsoever except for the potential of something greater.

I graduated from my bootcamp in early 2017 and am angling for a promotion from Jr. Developer to Associate by the end of this year. I think most everyone from my cohort is still at their dev jobs.

This part of your reply stood out to me:

"I think a lot of people don't become competent after these bootcamps because they just aren't technical enough to grasp the concepts at the pace they're introduced in class."

because I think it's 100% accurate. I had a lot of education to carry out alongside my job, where I was learning a ton of programming concepts in the real world and let me tell you, it's not easy stuff. But, luckily for me, with the right supervisor or mentor or peers, you can climb the mountain a little easier.

I think bootcamps work best for people who are already technical but aren't specifically trained as programmers.

I have a friend from college that was a biochemist for a while, took a bootcamp course, and is now a dev at Microsoft.