Flatiron School was nothing like this. We had long lectures every day by a great senior-level dev, and then review sessions with recent grads later in the day. It was a really polished curriculum, and a great environment to work hard in. $20k is indeed expensive, but it's only money. I used to do something I didn't love for a living and now I get to write code. Life is short. I'm thankful bootcamps exist and there was a path for me to transition into a challenging, engaging career.
I've been out for almost a year now. I hope they're still keeping the standards high.
Circa a year ago the remote HR experience was pretty great. While the lectures were pre-recorded (to be expected) we always had Q&A sessions to demystify any remaining questions. And our tech leads were from notable companies.
I figured the remote option was really as great as it gets - the majority of the learning still being applicable (many teams work via repositories rather than shared drives anyways) while getting to do the whole thing with no pants from my room in Arizona (much cheaper living expenses).
That's been brought up a few times in this thread. I don't think it's a fair comparison at all. You can borrow student loans for college, but the $20k comes out of pocket.
Or you could do what I did, get a shitty minimum-wage code monkey startup job beforehand so you know what you're getting into before you commit, then sock away some funds, take out a personal loan, and because you're a programmer you can turn the entire tuition into a business expense and also deduct the cost of moving to <insert tech hub here>.
Easily paid the loan off once I got my first job. Got a huge tax return last month. Now enjoying writing this from Mountain View.
Most bootcamp students already have college degrees. Many have families and mortgages, etc. Dropping from the workforce for four years to do another college degree isn't a realistic option. Tuition isn't the biggest cost of education at a certain point in life; lost wages is.
A second bachelor's is unlikely to take four years of full-time work; e.g., Oregon State's online second bachelor's in CS is a 1-year full time program.
That's cool and an option I didn't know about. Still, an entire year of lost wages is way more expensive than a bootcamp. I couldn't have made that work.
> Still, an entire year of lost wages is way more expensive than a bootcamp.
Plenty of people do online programs nearly equivalent to full-time (with loads like that of the 1.5-year track for the OSU second bachelor's, which is also available on 2-, 3-, and 4-year tracks with lower impacts, though longer terms) with full-time jobs and families, some even do full-time programs (like the 1-year track) that way. People that need to learn around an existing job and often family commitments are pretty much the core market for distance education.
That's not to say bootcamps don't have their place, but the idea that there is no other option for people who want to become programmers and can't afford to take a lot of time off of their existing job is just wrong.
You can now borrow for high quality, reputable Bootcamps. In fact, the lenders who do this are extremely diligent about researching our outcomes. They do not want to lend $20k to students to attend a program that doesn't have PROVEN high quality outcomes. Hack Reactor has demonstrated that we have those kinds of successes so we have a number of lenders willing to provide financing to our students.
I've been out for almost a year now. I hope they're still keeping the standards high.