As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I attended a bootcamp(Dev Bootcamp) and it was a life-changing time for me. However, I will say this: - When there's

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I attended a bootcamp(Dev Bootcamp) and it was a life-changing time for me. However, I will say this: - When there's a gold rush, there are going to be people trying to make money selling shovels. Some of those shovels are going to be crap. Perhaps most. That doesn't mean that some people aren't running an honest business(or in this case, a bootcamp). - Bootcamps are what you make of them. If you expect them to be like a school where knowledge is just dumped on your lap by a professor, you're going to be in for a world of disappointment. If you're willing to take charge of your learning and are willing to spend the time sharing knowledge with others, and dedicate yourself to maximizing your time(studying, projects, failing in a good way), then a bootcamp will be for you. I spent as much time as I could learning, and was often the last person to exit the building in the early AM. - In relation to the previous point, you may not necessarily need a bootcamp. If you have the passion and the will, you can acquire the knowledge and skills on your own. You could take the tens of thousands of dollars you'd spend on a bootcamp and quit work for a while to study and do projects at home, go to hacker spaces, and attend developer meetups, and you'd get something pretty close to what a bootcamp will give you. However, a bootcamp will bring you together with a bunch of other people in the same position as you in somewhere like San Francisco where there's nonstop action going on. By going to Dev Bootcamp, I was immersed in a world I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to and had experiences with people I might not have had otherwise. All in all, most of the value of a bootcamp is being around people you can learn from and with. If you find that on your own, then you might be able to save by not having to pay that bootcamp tuition. All that said, I don't completely disagree with Shaw's tweets. A lot of bootcamps are clearly(IMO) predatory. Ultimately, a bootcamp can't make any guarantees as to whether or not you get a job. That task is ultimately up to you and, as much as it's not fair, your success will mostly stem from your ability to sell yourself. You can be a completely shit programmer but charm your way into a career. Income share deals, I think, are a bad idea, even if they work out for a few. At that point, you might as well save money by skipping bootcamp and do the learn-on-your-own approach I described earlier. There are many bootcamps that act like they have standards but will actually take just about anyone, even if they aren't really the type that can handle the self-responsibility of going to a bootcamp. Shaw might be painting with a broad brush, he's not totally wrong.