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I find bootcamps to be an interesting industry. The general perception is that they're learning institutions, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In r

I find bootcamps to be an interesting industry. The general perception is that they're learning institutions, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, bootcamps are technical recruitment agencies. Companies are realizing that smart, motivated people with no CS degree can still oftentimes excel in the majority of positions (primarily app development.) The problem is finding those people. Bootcamps have stepped in to bridge that gap - they essentially screen for people who learn quickly, teach them the bare essentials, and send them on their way. This means bootcamps have a symbiotic relationship with the quality of students they're able to attract. The best bootcamps turn out the highest quality students, who then get the best jobs, which makes the bootcamp look better. Dev Bootcamp was always in that awkward position where it was trying to be one of the "premiere" bootcamps, but never actually made it to tier 1 status. It's always lived in the shadow of Hack Reactor, Fullstack Academy, and to a lesser extent, App Academy. Having personally worked with Dev Bootcamp graduates, I've felt that on average, they were much weaker than the graduates from the other bootcamps I mentioned. Since Hack Reactor in particular has been expanding its reach to additional locations, Dev Bootcamp was probably getting boxed out of the premium bootcamp space. The founders were unwilling to be relegated to tier 2 (or the demand was dropping too fast) so they had to pull out. It's a shame, but I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

busterarm 9y ago
Early Dev Bootcamp grads I know are pretty talented, but over the last couple years they seem to be the bootcamp of choice for people with less prior experience (that's a good thing) and less commitment to their own personal development & the industry (that's a bad thing). Those two things combined are a disaster.
- nathan-wailes 9y ago
  Interesting...thanks for sharing that information.
austenallred 9y ago
That's really no different than any university. A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country. The signaling factor is as important as the education, often times. Bootcamps are this weird space where, because they're so short and so expensive, even the most legitimate are considered mediocre by most employers because you can only teach so much in three months. So you can make it a year long, but then do you charge $40-80k up-front? No one has that kind of money.
- bovitclan 9y ago
  > A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country. The difference between the people who go to Harvard and those that don't has much more to do with money. Hire people with this assumption at your own peril.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Born Stanford and Harvard provide very generous financial aid packages to those that "get in" but aren't rich. The problem is getting in requires a lot of prep and achievement long before the college application is submitted, and that's where the rich get their leg up. And at the end of the day, that is still worth something to employers.
    - bovitclan 9y ago
      The claim is not that colleges provide no value, but that going to college is not a reliable indicator of anything but privilege. Using it as an indicator of intelligence or work ethic, especially as being more intelligent and hard working than someone who got their degree from University of Phoenix, doesn't work. It's just buying into the narrative that rich people must be rich because they're smart.
      - twobuy 9y ago
        I think the parent comment was referring to Harvard/Stanford's need-blind admissions & full financial aid packages.
lorenzq 9y ago
This is definitely the case. I got accepted to both HR and Dev Bootcamp. I chose HR because it had the better reputation and had released outcomes statistics. HR had tougher requirements to get in, you had to understand more programming than a freshman or sophomore college student. Dev Bootcamp accepted me with a logic puzzle and basic if statements and for loops. There was no competition. HR's recent purchase of Makersquare has me a bit worried that they are outstripping the supply of smarter incoming students but I can't say for sure yet without interviewing a larger sample.
- hrgradthrowaway 9y ago
  Fellow HR grad here. There was a point in time where completely unqualified students memorized and gamed the admissions process. Someone who did the remote interview copy and pasted the answers around the internet. This led to a very large amount of students that were just not prepared for the program in any way, and it also coincided with the window in time that HR decided that they weren't going to remove any students for performance issues. It was a fucking mess. I know people who mock interviewed students from those cohorts and they decided to completely disassociate with the school because of the experience. I know people who technically interviewed them at their companies and they blacklisted Hack Reactor after too many of those rotten apples couldn't write a simple for loop. Some of these interviewers were Hack Reactor grads themselves. I know someone who hired one of the people from those cohorts and had to fire them for performance after trying to give them half a year and excessive mentorship to improve. It's a shame that shit like this has happened, because in my eyes it's irreparably tarnished the Hack Reactor name. I've given away my hoodie/tshirt to Goodwill because it just doesn't mean anything special to me anymore.
  - lorenzq 9y ago
    They've started kicking those people out again (around 7%). They check performance on your daily problems, how much you contribute to the peer projects, and a hard cut at a midterm exam where they record your screen and make sure you're not just copying solutions. They also weed people out on behavioural teamwork issues. Some of the people who got kicked out just dropped back to the next cohort though, which is severely disappointing, because on top of paying the full tuition they are likely to fail again. I checked and there's no way those people can catch up based on their code, they're the kind of people Jeff Atwood talks about. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
jnmandal 9y ago
Just want to point out that the founders ~peaced~ left 3 years ago. Kaplan has been running the program over the past few years.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  > the founders peaced 3 years ago What does this mean?
  - jnmandal 9y ago
    I mean they sold the company
  - jnmandal 9y ago
    I mean they sold the company
  - magic_beans 9y ago
    "Peaced" (to peace) is a colloquialism which means "to leave" or "to abandon". In this case, it indicates the founders left the company.
- Unbeliever69 9y ago
  For-profit education companies, looking to get a piece of the action, have swept in and bought numerous bootcamps. This very thing happened to Dev Mountain a few years back. If you look at the reviews prior and after this acquisition, there is a very stark contrast to what happens when a reputable business is converted into a cash cow.
tootie 9y ago
I think the students build confidence at least as much as they learn practical skills. Having an experienced technologist watch you work and say "that part is good, this part needs this change" is enormously valuable for any sort of advanced amateur. The kind of person who maybe builds sites and apps, but doesn't know what they don't know and have never received validation.
archildress 9y ago
You've also just described MBA programs.
- magic_beans 9y ago
  They're not free upfront though...?
bluesnow10 9y ago
Here's what's wrong with the in-person bootcamp space: https://medium.com/@clintmania/in-person-coding-bootcamps-are-terrible-businesses-d4c9f122814 https://medium.com/@clintmania/in-person-coding-bootcamps-ar...
doktrin 9y ago
> Dev Bootcamp was always in that awkward position where it was trying to be one of the "premiere" bootcamps, but never actually made it to tier 1 status. It's always lived in the shadow of Hack Reactor, Fullstack Academy, and to a lesser extent, App Academy. Having personally worked with Dev Bootcamp graduates, I've felt that on average, they were much weaker than the graduates from the other bootcamps I mentioned. They definitely were not "always" in that awkward position since DBC was the first of these bootcamps, and is where the entire term 'coding bootcamp' originated. Early DBC grads went on to start several of the other "top tier" bootcamps, including Hack Reactor.

busterarm 9y ago

Early Dev Bootcamp grads I know are pretty talented, but over the last couple years they seem to be the bootcamp of choice for people with less prior experience (that's a good thing) and less commitment to their own personal development & the industry (that's a bad thing). Those two things combined are a disaster.

nathan-wailes 9y ago
Interesting...thanks for sharing that information.

austenallred 9y ago

That's really no different than any university. A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country. The signaling factor is as important as the education, often times. Bootcamps are this weird space where, because they're so short and so expensive, even the most legitimate are considered mediocre by most employers because you can only teach so much in three months. So you can make it a year long, but then do you charge $40-80k up-front? No one has that kind of money.

bovitclan 9y ago
> A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country. The difference between the people who go to Harvard and those that don't has much more to do with money. Hire people with this assumption at your own peril.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Born Stanford and Harvard provide very generous financial aid packages to those that "get in" but aren't rich. The problem is getting in requires a lot of prep and achievement long before the college application is submitted, and that's where the rich get their leg up. And at the end of the day, that is still worth something to employers.
  - bovitclan 9y ago
    The claim is not that colleges provide no value, but that going to college is not a reliable indicator of anything but privilege. Using it as an indicator of intelligence or work ethic, especially as being more intelligent and hard working than someone who got their degree from University of Phoenix, doesn't work. It's just buying into the narrative that rich people must be rich because they're smart.
    - twobuy 9y ago
      I think the parent comment was referring to Harvard/Stanford's need-blind admissions & full financial aid packages.

lorenzq 9y ago

This is definitely the case. I got accepted to both HR and Dev Bootcamp. I chose HR because it had the better reputation and had released outcomes statistics. HR had tougher requirements to get in, you had to understand more programming than a freshman or sophomore college student. Dev Bootcamp accepted me with a logic puzzle and basic if statements and for loops. There was no competition. HR's recent purchase of Makersquare has me a bit worried that they are outstripping the supply of smarter incoming students but I can't say for sure yet without interviewing a larger sample.

hrgradthrowaway 9y ago
Fellow HR grad here. There was a point in time where completely unqualified students memorized and gamed the admissions process. Someone who did the remote interview copy and pasted the answers around the internet. This led to a very large amount of students that were just not prepared for the program in any way, and it also coincided with the window in time that HR decided that they weren't going to remove any students for performance issues. It was a fucking mess. I know people who mock interviewed students from those cohorts and they decided to completely disassociate with the school because of the experience. I know people who technically interviewed them at their companies and they blacklisted Hack Reactor after too many of those rotten apples couldn't write a simple for loop. Some of these interviewers were Hack Reactor grads themselves. I know someone who hired one of the people from those cohorts and had to fire them for performance after trying to give them half a year and excessive mentorship to improve. It's a shame that shit like this has happened, because in my eyes it's irreparably tarnished the Hack Reactor name. I've given away my hoodie/tshirt to Goodwill because it just doesn't mean anything special to me anymore.
- lorenzq 9y ago
  They've started kicking those people out again (around 7%). They check performance on your daily problems, how much you contribute to the peer projects, and a hard cut at a midterm exam where they record your screen and make sure you're not just copying solutions. They also weed people out on behavioural teamwork issues. Some of the people who got kicked out just dropped back to the next cohort though, which is severely disappointing, because on top of paying the full tuition they are likely to fail again. I checked and there's no way those people can catch up based on their code, they're the kind of people Jeff Atwood talks about. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

jnmandal 9y ago

Just want to point out that the founders ~peaced~ left 3 years ago. Kaplan has been running the program over the past few years.

chrisseaton 9y ago
> the founders peaced 3 years ago What does this mean?
- jnmandal 9y ago
  I mean they sold the company
- jnmandal 9y ago
  I mean they sold the company
- magic_beans 9y ago
  "Peaced" (to peace) is a colloquialism which means "to leave" or "to abandon". In this case, it indicates the founders left the company.
Unbeliever69 9y ago
For-profit education companies, looking to get a piece of the action, have swept in and bought numerous bootcamps. This very thing happened to Dev Mountain a few years back. If you look at the reviews prior and after this acquisition, there is a very stark contrast to what happens when a reputable business is converted into a cash cow.

tootie 9y ago

I think the students build confidence at least as much as they learn practical skills. Having an experienced technologist watch you work and say "that part is good, this part needs this change" is enormously valuable for any sort of advanced amateur. The kind of person who maybe builds sites and apps, but doesn't know what they don't know and have never received validation.

archildress 9y ago

You've also just described MBA programs.

magic_beans 9y ago
They're not free upfront though...?

bluesnow10 9y ago

Here's what's wrong with the in-person bootcamp space: https://medium.com/@clintmania/in-person-coding-bootcamps-are-terrible-businesses-d4c9f122814 https://medium.com/@clintmania/in-person-coding-bootcamps-ar...

doktrin 9y ago

> Dev Bootcamp was always in that awkward position where it was trying to be one of the "premiere" bootcamps, but never actually made it to tier 1 status. It's always lived in the shadow of Hack Reactor, Fullstack Academy, and to a lesser extent, App Academy. Having personally worked with Dev Bootcamp graduates, I've felt that on average, they were much weaker than the graduates from the other bootcamps I mentioned. They definitely were not "always" in that awkward position since DBC was the first of these bootcamps, and is where the entire term 'coding bootcamp' originated. Early DBC grads went on to start several of the other "top tier" bootcamps, including Hack Reactor.