One of my former co-workers at IBM went to a bootcamp in SF. She is pretty smart. Though, I feel that bootcamps are kinda scams. Not like colleges though.

I went to college and did a bootcamp.

College - 212K tuition (current) - 4 yrs - no job guarantee

Bootcamp - 18K tuition - 3 months - money back if no job within a year

Can you spot the scam?

While I sympathize with your point, I also see someone who made a really poor choice in picking a college. I'll wager that in every state there is a decent university that will get you a 4 year degree for under $60K.

It's as if I compared your average college with a crappy bootcamp. Let's not cherry-pick.

The number I want to see is the percentage of college grads with a BS in CS who get a (decent) job within a year, vs the percentage of people who complete a bootcamp who get a (decent) job within a year. I suspect the numbers will favor college, but I honestly have no idea.

Getting your money back sounds like a good deal, but you'd still have spent a whole year without a job, and nothing to show for it.

I would also say that going to college was a bad choice, but the one I picked was one of the good ones where the name means something. Still a rip off, but a lot of people paid the same for absolutely nothing.

> but the one I picked was one of the good ones where the name means something.

As someone who went both to an average university and one ranked 3rd in the country, I can tell you: The name doesn't mean much in the engineering discipline. Certainly, a CS degree from CMU will likely get you into more interviews, and they probably earn more in the long run, but the person who got his BS in CS from an average state school with a good GPA will almost certainly get a job within a year. Very few exceptions. With bootcamps, I expect that percentage is a lot lower.

As a data point, I work in a top tech company and while people from big name schools are slightly overrepresented, the majority of folks are not from big name schools. Certainly plenty of people from my average state school here have senior positions.

I know it means nothing in engineering, which I think is great. But I went for finance, which is exactly the opposite.

To be fair, money back promises are often used as part of a scam.

Personally i think neither are a scam (although 212k is ridiculous, glad i dont live in usa) just make sure you understand what they are selling and that it matches what you want.

I actually know someone who got the money back in this case, so not a scam.

Haha yeah. Though, some of the boot camp folks who I noticed . Usually have earned a bachelors with a major in something else than CS etc. Then made the transition to tech via a bootcamp. I applied to the recurse center a while back and got rejected.

I went to college and have many coworkers who went to boot camps, and we’re paid the same!

Look on LinkedIn for people who work at the companies you want to work at, and also went to bootcamps, to build a shortlist.

There are several boot camps today, in every major urban area, that carry major street cred in the local tech communities.

Counter-anecdote: I work with a couple of devs who went the bootcamp path. Great front-end devs. However, they are paid significantly less for the same work relative to fresh grads in the office. Wages aren't based off of fairness, but on market factors. They are paid less presumably because management knows they have less options.

Do you know specific good ones?

In the NYC area, the ones I can personally vouch for, having worked with graduates, are Flatiron School, App Academy, and the Recurse Center.

I’m sure there are other good ones, but I only personally know graduates of these programs.

Recurse Center is not a bootcamp

You’re right, but it fits in the mold of “nontraditional education” so I opted to include it.

I do know a handful of people who attended RC with minimal to zero prior programming skills, though this is definitely not the norm.