You're right. The disconnect here, I suspect, is that bootcamps tend to promise that their grads will become the rockstars making hundreds of thousands of doll

You're right. The disconnect here, I suspect, is that bootcamps tend to promise that their grads will become the rockstars making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in Silicon Valley. Not that they'll be able to set up WordPress or do reporting with SQL queries. Some make this very, very explicit - I've seen ads that literally read "GET A SIX FIGURE JOB". I've worked as a freelancer. I've worked at big-name tech. I've worked on in-house development teams and outsourcing companies. In every one of those scenarios, I had to understand the fundamentals of how computers work and apply analytical abilities to be effective. So I could deliver features on time, on budget, and as specified. I'm not going to claim to be some super smart genius, but I often found myself dealing with shrapnel from colleagues who possessed wonderful opportunities to improve their grasp of fundamentals. It's not that there aren't jobs for line cooks or people turning out cookie-cutter blog sites. But when you run a training program promising everyone who signs up that they'll be a chef de cuisine while knowing that you're just training line cooks...